Pissing on the Dead

Well look who's got a blog! jimmyjeffguckertgannon - and he's trading on the late and truly lamented Hunter S. Thompson - "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room" declares the right's favorite rent boy! Meanwhile, he quotes some of his dimmer fellow travelers in their continued missing of the point:

They should propose performing the exact same investigation on all WH reporters. Send out a questionnaire that reflects the matters that find them in such breathless anxiety when it comes to Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. To wit:
1. Ask if any reporter is a homosexual.
2. Ask if any has ever exchanged sex for anything.
3. Ask them to list all web sites with which they have ever had any involvement.
4. Review all of their questions and articles for any bias, agenda, or tendentiousness.
4. Ask for a list of all political associations, involvements, activities, financial giving.
6. Once step five is completed, the same investigation must be performed on the organizations that employ them.
7. Report the results.

Now, it is very doubtful this would lead anywhere even if someone did it - the number of reporters serving or advertising themselves as prostitutes on the Internet is probably rather small - and even when something embarrassing does come up (ask Andrew Sullivan), it generally only ruins your career if you didn't really have a career.

But that aside - that isn't what happened to jjdgg. If you wanted to apply to the whole press corps the standards applied to him:
1) What kind of questions do they ask at press conferences? Do they make fools of themselves?
2) If so - where do they work? How legitimate is that organization?
3) Are they plagiarizing white house press releases?
4) How did they get their credentials, if they are plagiarists working for a news organization that appears to be a front for a partisan lobbying outfit?
5) And then - I guess the next step depends on whether they are a prostitute offering their services over the internet - but - do they have or have they recently had web sites offering their services as a prostitute on the internet? What about the nude photos?

It has to be admitted that the comedy potential of number five increases significantly if the reporter is conservative, gay, or both. Degree of closetedness is another parameter. Screaming that some bleeding heart liberal is gay is just not going to get much traction - less now, when just being a liberal is so often grounds for consignment to hell. But for right wing hacks - well! But going on the continuing efforts of righties to defend jjdgg by pretending to be outraged that liberals are mocking him for being gay - the comedy never really stops. Jimjeff is a walking ridikulus spell, that turns everyone who approaches into a figure of fun.

Gonzo

Hunter S. Thompson has left us. Majikthise offers a pessimistic reading:

Gonzo is dead because the mainstream media have abolished objectivity and subjectivity--the facts don't matter, but neither does the perspective of any individual. Like gonzo journalists, today's campaign reporters love to tell impressionistic yarns. Unlike gonzo journalists they don't want to talk about their own experiences. Enterprising reporters collect "gaffes" and "coups" and spin them into parables. The winner is the journalist whose just-so story becomes "The Defining Moment."

I am hard pressed to disagree. The Rude Pundit offers an excellent eulogy as well.

Meanwhile, hop over to Atrios and take a look at the new "Real AARP Agenda" ad he's got up - then read about it at Talking Points Memo. What the hell?

It's gotta be shit like that that drove the great man to despair - how can you make up funny shit that's weirder than that, or jimmyjeffguckertgannon?

Burning Issues of the Day

I have been slow to comment on Ward Churchill - probably because the controversy is so obviously manufactured, and because there's not much I might say that hasn't been said already. It's boring! But I do want to put something up - here's Brien Leiter commenting at some length on the case, on Churchill's actual argument and whether any of it comprises a firing offense. And the Volokh Conspiracy, not surprisingly, has a very intelligent analysis fromt he conservative side. (Here, by the way, is the thing itself - and a more recent revision.)

I can't add much. I think this is mostly about intimidation. Kevin Drum runs down the chronology - a local story, an AP story, a New York Post story, Joe Scarborough, O'Reilly, The Washington Times, " the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune Review - and then the New York Times - and then the world. Sez Drum:

It's fascinating how a trivial story like this managed to spread so far, isn't it? The right wing machine pushed, the New York Times responded, and then the rest of the press followed. Within days, the previously insignificant Ward Churchill had become a household name and a virtual poster boy for lefty nihilism based on something that no one on either the left or right had cared a whit about in the three years since he wrote it. Truly an object lesson for us all.

Or as Majikthise put it, "brutal political theater. In a dazzling display of demagoguery Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough and their minions spun a hackneyed 3-year-old essay by a nonentity into a scandal that culminated in death threats and demotion." I think that is what it has all been about - smacking down someone, not so much because of what he did (however loathsome - "depraved", says Eugene Volokh - it might have been), but in order to show their power.

Meanwhile - cramming All The Great Issues of the Day into One Lazy Post - this story is just mind boggling. (Beware! naked reporter pix within!) It's one thing when the guy lobbing softball questions to Scott McClellan and President Bush is an amateur hack, writing for a fake news site run by a partisan organization. It's another when he's using a pseudonym. And another when he's plagiarizing from White House press releases. And another when he has gay-themed personal ads up on AOL. But when he registers gay porn sites? No - he registers gay escort sites? No, he is a gay escort?

What the fuck?

And this guy had access to information about Valerie Plame?

Anyway, I imagine sooner or later the right wing might have to stop missing the point - like here, trying to turn Russell Mokhiber into a left wing version of Gannon. That can't work, can it? Gannon maybe got criticized for being a hack - but he got run out of town on a rail for being a criminal. (And, of course, for the hypocrisy - you know, the Bush White House, defenders of decency and traditional values and all, using a gay prostitute as a plant in the press. Oh, the irony! Oh!) It's not about his politics (though that is where it started - but it would have stayed as ridicule and abuse if that's all there was) - it's not about his personal life, per se - it's about the fact that his personal life turned out to be so incredibly disgusting.

Anyway - the best source of information has beena nd remains, Americablog.

Speaking of DIY...

Learning to Love You More is a web site I have just found, just now, while randomly clicking around stray bookmarks and such, updating all my home page links. It has some of the tone of the kinds of communal, participatory, art popular in the 60s and 70s - and, relevant to my previous post, a major part of the early days of video art. Description?

Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests. Yuri Ono designs and manages the web site.

Just glancing at it - this could be a source of days of joy.

Video Killed the Blogging Star

Blogging? I generally ignore blogging on blogging, which explains why I am only getting to Jack Shafer's week old article now - but reading it, I see some interesting comments on the Sony Portapak Video revolution. Now that's intriguing. Did the portapak change the world? at least, the balance of power in the media world? Did it? Shafer's got some good stuff from Michael Shamberg, one of the pioneers (at Raindance) of the video revolution. Shamberg proclaiming,

With portable videotape technology, anything recorded on location is ready on location, instantly. Thus, people can control information about themselves, rather than surrender that power to outsiders. ABC, CBS, and NBC do not swim like fish among the people. They watch from the beach and thus just see the surface of the water.

Did that revolution come? That is the question, but it's not time to answer it yet...

When it comes to blogs, there's plenty of the same kind of hyperbole. Quothe Shafer:

In language only slightly less fervent than Shamberg's, conference participants declared blogs the destroyers of mainstream media. (See this page and this page for a real-time transcription of the conference.) Others prescribed blogs as the medicine the newspaper industry should take to reclaim its lost readers: Publishers should support reader blogs and encourage their reporters to blog in addition to writing stories. Podcasts would undermine the radio network empires. "Open source" journalism, in which readers and bloggers help set the news agenda for newspapers, was promoted as a tonic for what ails the press. Reporters were encouraged to regain the lost trust of readers by blogging drafts of their stories, their notes, and even their taped interviews so other bloggers could dissect and analyze them for fairness.

It's easy to mock that stuff, and all the shivery self-promotion bloggers indulge in. It's probably easier since it is, so often, a rehash of the shivery gushing advocates of portable film equipment, portable video cameras, the personal computer, the world wide web, etc. etc. have indulged in through the years. The problem with mocking it is, those things have changed the world. What is missing from the bloggers' version of the story, though Shafer has it, is that the change is usually absorbed into the existing structures of the media (since that is what we are talking about.) Electronic delivery (and creation) systems - like blogs - are absorbed by the existing media - or absorb it - or - this is not new. I have not had a newspaper subscription since, I think, 2000. I read the same papers - read more papers, actually - online. For this reader, blogs, the New York Times, online database sites (IMDB, AMG), academic journals - are part of a continuum of internet material.

Video did the same thing - changed everything, but did it without seeming to change everything. Those portapak cameras are directly responsible for huge swaths of what is on TV right now - reality shows? the way news is reported - the way movies look? the way video games look? The internet has already done much the same thing with text information - it is the delivery system of choice for quite a few people (even people who still read books and magazines). It chas changed the way information is organized, the way we conceptualize information. It has not eliminated old media, or the power structures of old media - though it undoubtedly will change them.

Finally, getting to the bloggers, getting to blog "triumphalism" as it is called: the idea that somehow blogs replace television or newspapers or magazines is somewhere between ridiculous and rather terrifying. Or let me rephrase - replacing television, as a source of news, is almost all good - blogs are deeper, more interactive than TV. Going from TV to blogs for your news is undoubtedly a step up. But newspapers, magazines are still the defininitive sources for information. Blogs don't compate, and can't compete. Blogs - at least the kinds of political blogs that political bloggers think are the only kind - are, really, not about producing content at all. They are pointers - they are records of what someone has read, and has thought other people should read. This tendency seems to get stronger the more political the blog is - the less political blogs tend to be more interestingly written. But there you go.

I'm a Day Late and a Dollar Short

...but check out Slacktivist's post on Groundhog Day. (Check out Ebert as well.) Slacktivist has the moral and philosophical musings and the broader context to put it in.... It's one of those films - and there aren't many (It's a Wonderful Life, and - ?) - that are popular, loved, and seem, if you think about them a bit, to get deeper and more interesting.

Makin' It Up

It's been a while since I've made fun of Doug Giles. It's a cottage industry in some corners of the blogosphere - god knows, the "Motel Messiah™" gives you enough material. But I'll leave the ridicule to TBogg and company, and just comment on the history.

This week's column is called Packed, Stacked and Ready to Whack - it has nothing to do with gay porn - it is another defense of the 2nd amendment. Alas, only the title is in rhyme, though Doug maintains his usual command of the English language. That aside, let's get to the history. Here's Doug, explaining the second amendment:

One of the basic human rights that constantly has to be defended is the right to keep and bear arms.  Why did the original founders of this great American experiment toss this given, no-duh, entitlement into the Constitution?  Well … it wasn’t so that we would be guaranteed that we could hunt squirrels and woodchucks without serving time, as great as that is.  It was for the purpose of defending ourselves against perps when the cops are running a little late, and for the purpose of protecting ourselves against the government should the system go south.

Alas, no, the right to keep and bear arms was not (originally) about protecting yourself from "perps" or even overthrowing the government. It is guaranteed for the fairly obvious purpose of maintaining a "well regulated militia" - so there would be no need of a standing army. Standing armies lead to tyranny, went the argument - an argument rooted in the English Civil War and the unfortunate example of Oliver Cromwell - an argument given plenty of fuel in the 1760s and 70s, as the redcoats made their presence felt in the colonies. Mr. Giles here makes a fundamental mistake - the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed not to protect the citizens against an army out of control - but to take the place of that army.

The rest of the column is typical nonsense - claiming that if the German citizens had been armed in the 1930s they wouldn't have voted Adolf Hitler into power -ignoring the fact that most of the free world has quite restrictive gun laws - and generally showing no sign of a clue as to how politics works. If he thinks arming both sides will prevent civil wars and genocides, he hasn't been paying attention.

More on Summers

Following up on my post on the Larry Summers controversy - Ezra Klein points to this response from Zoe Vanderwolk. She defends Summers, suggesting he was "set up" - that he was invited to speak off the record, but that his remarks were reported in the Boston Globe anyway, and out of context ("he summarized the contents of a paper that was about to be presented at the conference, which had valid statistical findings with regards to women underperforming in the sciences" she says). That seems reasonable enough, I guess, though I think it's unrealistic to expect anything someone in his position says to be taken apart from his position (and thus related to tenure issues at Harvard) - and I think the broader issues still tend to make Summers' remarks wrong-headed. In fact, Vanderwolk concludes the post with an argument that gets at what I was hoping I said:

Conclusions: many girls can do maths very well. Some can't. Some boys do maths extremely well. Many don't. However, schools shunt girls out of maths to concentrate on the small percentage that do extremely well, because that's how teachers are evaluated, and also because girls are routinely pushed out of maths at all levels. I think girls need more encouragement in general to do stuff, although I don't know if this is a nature or a nurture thing. A study I read last year showed a similar imbalance in women seeking office - once women actually run for office, there's no inherent bias against them, but many fewer women even bother to run initially because they are far less likely than men to get support and endorsement from political parties. . . .

Do Conservatives Think You're Stupid?

A particularly inspiring post on democracy and conservatism at Body and Soul. Taking off from this article (by Philip Agre, a UCLA professor.) Agre takes a dim view of conservatism:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

Jeanne D'Arc agrees. She adds:

Traditional conservatism is the polar opposite of democracy. It assumes people can't -- or shouldn't -- think for themselves, and that they have to be lead, either by fear or p.r. (or a combination) to accept the natural order in which some people  rule and others are ruled.

What leaves most progressives, even centrists, banging our heads against the walls and mumbling about pharisees and hypocrites is that this is obviously as true of modern conservatism as it has been of conservatism for thousands of years, and yet an astonishing number of people think that the nature of conservatism has changed, and that now it is somehow all about freedom and allowing every individual to achieve everything he or she can.

This is a significant point. The right has been selling itself as the party of self-reliance - of freedom, of indepenbdence for some time now. They do this in the face of the facts - they have never been the party of self-reliance, they have always been the party of protecting the positions of those who have the power and money, now. That has not changed, and indeed, the current administration has dropped a lot of the pretense - they still use the words, but they seem barely able to contain their laughter at the rubes who still think they are a party of anything other than fuck you.

Anyway, Jeanne goes on to note - relevantly in the wake of the disatrous election last fall, with all the gnashing of teeth and searching of souls indulged in by the left, the seeking of positions to abandon and images to create - that copying the tactics of the right - "Where's the money for our p.r. machine? How do we create the mechanism to make our mindless drivel as much a part of the common wisdom as theirs? How do we learn to do this propaganda thing?" - is a losing game:

Which is not an unreasonable reaction, but it's based on the disturbing -- and conservative -- notion that most people are so deeply stupid, or at least so uninterested in the world, that they can only be reached in the dishonest and patronizing ways conservatives have been reaching them.

God help us if that's true, because if it is, we've already lost.

Conservatism thrives on ignorance (which is not, by the way, to say that all, or even most, conservatives are ignorant; if you're one of the elect, conservatism is quite rational). It's not just that conservatives are better at exploiting innate ignorance, but that conservatism itself -- the idea that if we let our superiors make the tough decisions, and generally do what they think is best and in their interest (oh, wait, we're not supposed to think about that) all will be right with the world -- depends on cultivating  lazy habits of mind and a sense of personal ineptness when it comes to understanding the world.

I can't disagree. Under all forms of conservatism, even the libertarian varieties, is that assumption - that people - the mass of people - really can't make rational decisions, so we - who can make rational decisions - must at least make sure that they can't touch us, and at most actively make those decisions for them. And given that pattern, those assumptions - she is right as well, that if we adopt their methods - simplifying the message, trying to argue with sound bites and image, then we will simply play into their hands. That approach assumes the stupidity of the people - and since conservatism shares that assumption, it will benefit from it.

The problem with what she says is that, first - the left has been (and is) perfectly capable of authoritariamism. And has been, often enough in its history, as simple minded and paternalistic as the right. It is probably begging the question to say that leftist authoritarians and paternalists are "really" conservatives - but it's not an approach I would want to abandon. But that is a topic for another day - today - I'm with Jeanne.

The most basic liberal belief is that people can and must challenge what they're told, and figure things out for themselves. And at the heart of that is a faith that ordinary human beings are capable of that action. To me, the best thing about blogs is that they feed that faith. Every day they provide proof that the country is full of people with no power, and no pretensions to expertise, who nevertheless have things to say that trump most of what you hear from those whose job it is to pretend they know what they're talking about.

Amen.

Women and Science

In my neverending quest to not blog more, I have not bothered to post anything about the Larry Summers controversy. Summers, if you recall, made a speech a couple weeks ago in which he suggested that there were innate, biological reasons why more men than women work with math. This went over badly, as one may expect. And so, a couple days later, he apologized.

So last week, in the Boston Phoenix, Harvey Silverglate responded to Summers’ apology. He was not pleased. Unfortunately, his response is not edifying. Claiming that Summers was "merely stating the obvious" - that "it is no longer acceptable to speak honestly or intelligently about gender, race, sexual identity, or any other issue that has already been "decided" by entrenched orthodoxies " just is not going to work here. Others, who know what they are talking about more than I do, have already addressed the substance of Summers’ remarks - see Majikthise and Pharyngula) in particular. I’ll have to stick to more general remarks.

First - I do not think there is anything particularly intelligent or honest about Summers' remarks. They sound to me to be aimed at irritating people - establishing an image of provocation, of being willing to challenge sacred cows - without the benefit of any thought whatsoever. They are provocative in the sense of provoking people to complain, not provoking people to think. And - perhaps a more important motivation for his remarks, in context - they are self-justifying. At some level, they seem to be aimed at denying his (or Harvard's) responsibility for fixing the gender disparity in the sciences. By suggesting that there are inherent, immutable differences between the sexes which no amount of political and social change can fix, Summers' arguments certainly suggest that at some point, there is no more good to come from social and political change. Where that point is can remain vague, but when someone in his position makes a speech like that, the implication is that the point isn't all that far away.

To defend either of those arguments in the name of academic freedom is cheap and lazy. Some of this is for essentially political reasons: Summers is not an expert on questions of gender, and as president of Harvard, what he says carries great weight - so his amateur opinions are magnified, and - again because of his position - are read as politically significant. (Some discussion of this can be found at the 800 pound gorilla of academic blogs, the Becker-Posner blog.) But beyond that, I think there are some fairly serious reasons why the whole issue is misleading.

Back in the first round of commentary on it, Matthew Yglesias posted something that, I thought, got around the obstructionism that mostly characterizes these debates. "Empirical research into genetics is only a red herring" said he - whether there are genetic differences or not, there are too many societal differences in the treatment of men and women for the genetic differences to be significant. (The Pharyngula link posted above has some similar thoughts - Myers arguing that even the differences that are detectable between men and women are too narrow to be related directly to academic positions.) Even Richard Posner, I think, falls into some of this trap, writing

It seems unlikely that all sex-related differences in occupational choice are due to discrimination; and therefore someone who explores alternative explanations should not be excoriated.

The problem, as Yglesias suggests, is that to speak of "innate" or "genetic" differences is to speak about something well beyond where we are now. That is - Posner (for instance) suggests that while discrimination declines, gender differences remain - this (he adds) suggests that there is something - else - at work. The argument presented by Summers is that the "something else" is biological - when the "something else" could be anything, from biology to social norms, role models, etc. Discrimination can't be defined as exiting only in the jopb market, or even in classrooms, in a simple way. It exists in what boys and girls are encouraged to do (for example) as much as in what they are prevented from doing. In short - I think it is unwise to talk about the genetic roots of social conditions, when you have nowhere nearly exhausted the possible social explanations.

Idealistic Hot Air

Here's David Brooks in the NY Times, talking about Bush's inauguration speech. It's a strange article. I quote, at length:

The people who detest America take a look at this odd conjunction and assume the materialistic America is the real America; the ideals are a sham. The real America, they insist, is the money-grubbing, resource-wasting, TV-drenched, unreflective bimbo of the earth. The high-toned language, the anti-Americans say, is just a cover for the quest for oil, or the desire for riches, dominion and war.

But of course they've got it exactly backward. It's the ideals that are real.

Two years from now, no one will remember the spending or the ostrich-skin cowboy boots. But Bush's speech, which is being derided for its vagueness and its supposed detachment from the concrete realities, will still be practical and present in the world, yielding consequences every day.

With that speech, President Bush's foreign policy doctrine transcended the war on terror. He laid down a standard against which everything he and his successors do will be judged.

When he goes to China, he will not be able to ignore the political prisoners there, because he called them the future leaders of their free nation. When he meets with dictators around the world, as in this flawed world he must, he will not be able to have warm relations with them, because he said no relations with tyrants can be successful.

His words will be thrown back at him and at future presidents. American diplomats have been sent a strong message. Political reform will always be on the table. Liberation and democratization will be the ghost present at every international meeting. Vladimir Putin will never again be the possessor of that fine soul; he will be the menace to democracy and rule of law.

Because of that speech, it will be harder for the U.S. government to do what we did to Latin Americans for so many decades - support strongmen to rule over them because they happened to be our strongmen. It will be harder to frustrate the dreams of a captive people, the way in the early 1990's we tried to frustrate the independence dreams of Ukraine.

It will be harder for future diplomats to sit on couches flattering dictators, the way we used to flatter Hafez al-Assad of Syria decade after decade. From now on, the borders established by any peace process will be less important than the character of the regimes in that process.

The speech does not command us to go off on a global crusade, instantaneously pushing democracy on one and all. The president vowed merely to "encourage reform." He insisted that people must choose freedom for themselves. The pace of progress will vary from nation to nation.

The speech does not mean that Bush will always live up to his standard. But the bias in American foreign policy will shift away from stability and toward reform. It will be harder to cozy up to Arab dictators because they can supposedly help us in the war on terror. It will be clearer that those dictators are not the antidotes to terror; they're the disease.

Does he believe this? (So asks Belle Waring at Crooked Timber, where I found the link.) Has Bush, in any way, done anything that might indicate this kind of a shift? He still supports strongmen if they're our strongmen - he hasn't done anythign to challenge Putin. He hasn't done much to challenge any dictators we don't like, if they have the means to defend himself. Is anything going to change?

Bush's speech is, in fact, just more of the same - repeating the words - freedom, freedom, freedom - as if they meant anything. But mostly, just making people feel good about their country so they won't think too much about what their country is actually doing. To imagine Bush suddenly adopting Jimmy Carter's foreign policy, even its underlying rhetoric (in anything approaching an honest manner) is fantastic.

And finally - the proof is in the pudding. And Bush's first term definitely supports the idea that "The real America . . . is the money-grubbing, resource-wasting, TV-drenched, unreflective bimbo of the earth. The high-toned language, the anti-Americans say, is just a cover for the quest for oil, or the desire for riches, dominion and war." One thing Brooks has right - or would have right if anyone anywhere took one word Bush says at face value - is that Bush's speeches should hold us to ahigher standard. But - unless we meet that higher standard - people will take his words as the blather they are. And - unless something very drastic has changed - there is almost no possibility at all that the policy Brooks talks about will be followed, not by this administration....

Fun with iMusic Shuffle

A fun little game - open up iTunes/iPod/whateveryouhave, turn on shuffle - list the first 10 (next 10, whatever it is) songs to come up. Well?

Things - Fannypack
One Million Kisses - Half Japanese
Hello Good Child - Acid Mothers Temple
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and My Monkey - The Feelies
Treatment Bound - The Replacements
A Drop in Time - Mercury Rev
Good Fortune - PJ Harvey
Planet Claire - B-52s
The Neighborhood - Tom Waits
Run Run Run - Velvet Underground

An interesting stretch I guess.

Movies, 80s, Best

In the blogosphere, I find posts about 80s Movies. That is right up my alley, so I am going to post, and - if time permits - comment. Meanwhile, getting into the spirit of movie talk, Jim Snowden offers worst films even by great directors and best films by one-hit wonder directors. Those are interesting lists and topics themselves, and perhaps the spirit will move us to emulate.... not this post, though.

1 City of Sadness - dir. Hou Hsiao Hsien: follows a family in Taiwan from the end of WWII (it opens with Hirohito's radio speech, announcing Japan's surrender) to the arrival and takeover of Taiwan by the Guomindang. A beautiful film, with masterful articulation of space and depth of field, sophisticated use of time, flashbacks, ellipses and shifts of perspective, with a narrative and political sense that holds it together - the confusion of tongues, the ethnic and racial and political divisions, the wonderful accident of a star who couldn't speak Taiwanese, so played a deaf man, a perfect symbol for the impossibility of communication.... a film of political bitterness, and oppressive sadness.

2 Blue Velvet - David Lynch: Intense Freudian nightmare, with satiric overtones about middle America, TV, the Hardy Boy... brilliant in every possible way - gorgeous looking (the rich colors, the widescreen, wide angle cinematography, the distorted spaces, the lighting), gorgeous sounding - a funny, creepy, disturbing, moving masterpiece.

3 The Elephant Man - David Lynch: having seen this on video back in the 80s, I could like it, respect it - but until I'd seen it in a theater, in all its widescreen magnificence... when I did, I understood. The effect of the rich black and white, the odd portentious compositions, full of Lynchian spaces, with a kind of chorus of sights and sounds of machines. Men as monsters. Merrick on show, then, at the end, turned, made the looker as much as the lookee. The mirror. Dreams. Outstanding.

4 Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog sail a steamship up the Amazon, drag it over a mountain, and send it crashing through rapids. The story - Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, failed businessman, opera lover, hauling that steamship around - collapses into the performance of this man by Herzog and Kinski, but that doesn't matter either. Autobiographical, allegorical (isn't making any film a bit like hauling a steamship over a mountain? isn't life a bit like that? if it isn't - shouldn't it be?), absurd and wonderful all the way down.

5 Do the Right Thing - Spike Lee: A day in the life of Bed Stuy. A bad day. But Lee, here, is fair, giving everyone their reasons, and making it all make sense.

6 Peking Opera Blues - Tsui Hark: featuring an iconic performance by Bridget Lin, who is one of the great Movie Stars of all time. A thrilling, overpacked adventure involving an opera company, revolutionaries, warlords, gangsters, soldiers, petty thieves, and a good chunk of the burden of Chinese history. And the usual array of cross-dressing, derring do and bravura film-making one expects from Tsui Hark. Still a bit trapped by sound stages - lacks the production values of his Once Upon a Time in China films, but probably compensates with a tighter focus on the story and, well, Bridget Lin.

7 Black Rain - Shohei Imamura: adaptation of a book about a family living in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Imamura is an odd case - he has won the Palme D'Or twice at Cannes - for fairly unremarkable films. This one and Eijenaika are way better than Ballad of Narayama, his 80s winner. Somewhat unusual for Imamura - very restrained and dignified - the Ozu influence can be seen quite clearly.

8 Come and See - Elem Klimov: horrific story of a teenager fighting Germans in Bylorussia, 1943.

9 Full Metal Jacket - Stanley Kubrick: "I AM in a world of shit." Another of Kubrick's many fine war pictures, with the proof of the equation sex=death=shit worked out in some detail, in boot camp and Vietnam.

10 Brazil - Terry Gilliam: One of the best SF films ever. An everyman gets caught in a mistaken identity when his upstairs neighbor is mistaken for a revolutionary and taken away. He tries to help, and is himself destroyed. Brilliant evocation of a shabby future - cyberpunk almost before the word, with its low tech, grungy look and feel - a beautiful and genuinely haunting film.

Morning Despair

Fresh Horrors at Guantanamo - just great. James Woolcott comments. It's getting harder to snark. The unsettling fact that his "suggestion" that Fox hire Charles Graner is probably closer to a prediction - oh, maybe not Graner, but somebody smeared in the shit of this scandal is all too likely to turn up on TV alongside Ollie and G. Gordon Liddy (what a piker he is! all he ever tortured was himself!), probably pissing and moaning about the wickedness of Randy Moss or whichever Hilton sister is peddling smut this week.

Fucking hell.

How Low Can you go?

I know this has been discussed for a while now, but I have to say something - The Salvador Option?

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

The fact that it is being discussed at all - is surprising, how? We've already more or less adopted torture as a policy; we've got an AG nominee who (along with the torture) thinks the president is not subject to the constitution...

You get what you vote for I guess. Unfortunately, I get what they voted for too - crap.

How Low Can you go?

I know this has been discussed for a while now, but I have to say something - The Salvador Option?

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

The fact that it is being discussed at all - is surprising, how? We've already more or less adopted torture as a policy; we've got an AG nominee who (along with the torture) thinks the president is not subject to the constitution...

You get what you vote for I guess. Unfortunately, I get what they voted for too - crap.

Some Metablogging

So here I am this Thursday night thinking about... as we move into this new year... hopes dreams plans... expectations, goals! Right! Let us ask ourselves: how can we make this blog worth reading? more frequent posts might be a start, and posts that actually say something.... it is a cruel circle, yes? why, if it were more interesting here, I would post more!

No, no, let's be serious. A new year upon us and all that. Let us imagine an influx of energy, and some focus for that energy. Let us imagine, then, the arts. Let us imagine, movie reviews, comments on books, or music, on art - the arts. The presidential elections are behind us, now maybe we can turn from politics, all the time, though it's hard with Alberto Gonzalez up for Attorney General. That's the sort of thing that will put you off your feed. Or get you reading - say, Human Rights First, which is blogging the hearings; Pandagon is also posting frequent comments; Uggabugga reminds us what the scum bags think, and James Wolcott states the matter plainly.

What the hell is wrong with us, as a country? That someone who justified the use of torture, and who claimed the president had the power to set aside the law, is being considered for the post of Attorney General? How did we get to this place? One terrorist attack? Is it possible?

You see the difficulty.... When I started playing with blogs, back - oh god - last spring (of 03!), I actually did post more about arts than politics - a bunch of stuff on comics, I remember.... well, I mentioned comics, somewhere in the post. That lasted about 2 posts, then it was monthly links to something stupid from Bush... But it is a new year! hopes, dreams, expectations abound!

So anyway, as a token of my, um, resolution to move forward in 2005, or back, or whichever direction it is, how about I offer up a list of movies? How about, Top Ten Movies Released (in my town) in 2004?

Since you asked real nice:

1) Goodbye, Dragon Inn
2) House of Flying Daggers
3) Crimson Gold
4) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5) Millenium Mambo
6) Moolaade
7) Napoleon Dynamite
8) Zatoichi
9) I heart huckabies
10) Gozu

Evil

Did Tom Delay really say this? Did he really read from Matthew 7 - the parable of the wise and foolish builders - at a prayer breakfast this week? I guess he did. It was on C-Span.

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that Tom Delay doesn't understand the passage - "it's about a flood, and there was a big flood, so, that will be real nice, I think" went the workings of his tiny brain, if this is the case. Alas, I have known too many bible readers who have pulled pieces out of context, or quoted things they simply didn't understand, to dismiss this explanation out of hand. He very well could be simply a moron.

The other explanation is that he meant it, literally (which, of course, is more than you can say of Jesus) - that a wise man builds his house on a rock (or lives in Texas) and a foolish man builds his house on sand (or lives in southern Asia). Or even meant it figuratively - we are good and god loves us, they are bad and god hates them, and has killed 150,000 of them because they had the temerity to live in SOuthern Asia...

In which case he is an evil moron.

However you explain it, the mere fact of it will bring you up short. Delay has really gone as low as one can go. MIsapplying scriptures like this - or worse - applying that scripture to this situation - is unimaginable.

Will Eisner

I just saw this - Will Eisner is dead. (I saw the news at Abu Aardvark's site, where I was reading his Comic Book Politics blog (linked to by Matthew Yglesias - this is getting confusing - how many parentheses in am I again?) Two?)

He was a great artist. He made some of the most completely satisfying comic art - from the Spirit on, to Fagin the Jew, which I believe is the last of his works I have, innovative and graceful and beautiful, and always intelligent and humane. He will be missed.

Happy New Year!

Well, this has taken longer than I thought - here I embarked on the new year full of enthusiasm and determination to blog regularly and... here it's the 4th already. Oh well.

On the other hand, this post can stand as a public sign that I have Fulfilled one of my New Year's Resoutions! For I type these words froom the basement of the local starbyucks, courtesy of a new wifi account - yay! This, I tell myself, will inspire me to all sorts of heights of blogging creativity! for now, I can post from Anywhere!

if I have the laptop.

Anyway, this is also almost completely contentless - nothing better, on a Tuesday - what is it? afternoon already? Wow.

We can only hope for more to follow, of a more edifying sort. For now -

Welcome, baby new year!

Where Have I Been?

I see I have not posted anything on this blog in over two weeks. That is, I fear, the annual tradition - pretty much all writing, posting to the internet, socializing, with anyone other than my family ends, around the holidays. The hope is that it starts back up in January. Hope is not a plan...

The big news this week has been the Tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean. There isn't much anyone can say about this. I know that isn't true - people have been talking about it all week - but nothing much you say means anything. Not about the Tsunami itself. Rather than blog, I imagine the thing to do is donate. There are lists of organizations at the link I posted - Amazon and Google and the like have links for donations.

And, of course, this is the end of the year - I certainly hope to post something of a year end (or new year) wrap up here - or several, including notes on Whither The Blog? but you know how that goes... hope is not a plan.

Sport Business Sanity

(Three words you don't see together very often.)

Looks like The Nationals are gonna be Les Expos again next year. From ESPN:

NEW YORK -- Washington's new baseball team shut down business and promotional operations indefinitely Wednesday as its move to the nation's capital teetered on the brink of collapse.

The decision by Major League Baseball followed the District of Columbia Council's decision Tuesday night to require private financing for at least half the cost of building a new stadium. The September agreement to move the Montreal Expos to Washington called for a ballpark fully financed by government money.

This is probably a very bad thing for Baseball - I should say, for Major League Baseball, the organization... But god, this is a great thing for the public at large. Someone stood up to the crap they sell. On something that makes sense, not the usual grandstanding Bullshit, like McCain on steroids. Jim Henley's Unqualifed Offerings has a couple posts up about it, and about the coverage of it. Jim Caple at ESPN agrees - and reminds us that the council still agreed to pay some $450 million, and that the real driving force here is MLB's desire to get all the sale money for the team for themselves. And after the fine fine job they've done the last couple years of raising the value of the franchise, who can blame them for wanting to make a modest profit off the deal?

Seriously - why should cities foot the bill? some of the bill, maybe, but all of it? No. And I should add - Henley quotes Mark Fisher uttering that old dead fish "Baseball was an opportunity to rise above those strains, to reach for world-class status, to lure suburbanites back into a view of Washington as the center, a place of pride." - a particular type of inanity I cannot abide . Baseball teams - basketball, football, what have you - do not make a place a world class city. Living in a city with some recent baseball success - winning the world series is great, but please - if we're a world class city, it's because of things like this, or maybe this (even if they are in a different city) - maybe even what lies across the fens from the baseball park. And, if we are a "world class city" - why the hell can't they get the trains running?

Ballad of the Hemp Beret

Check out comment # 10 on this post, over at Berube's blog - a high point, friends, of blogging commentary...

Mumia buttons on our chests
We’d all fail a urine test
One hundred crowd the hip café
But only three score the Hemp Beret

Thank you, thank you.

John, Paul, George, Ringo and Santa

Here is a Christmas gift to my 2 readers. The Beatles' Christmas songs, in mp3.

Via The Talent Show.

Probably the US Basketball Team

What on earth is this about?

In response to one or more indecency complaints, the Federal Communications Commission has asked NBC to send it tapes of its coverage of the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Athens, the network confirmed late yesterday.

I guess there were people impersonating Greek statues - and the Greeks, the barbaric bastards, don't wear clothes. I guess. Hard to say. All told, this reflects badly on the United States. But will probably continue...

Pointless Evil

A bad day for rock stars, I guess. Last night, December 8, 2004, Dimebag Darrell (Abbott), currently of a band called Damageplan, but mostly of Pantera, a major player in the metal scene, as respected a heavy metal guitarist as there is out there, was shot dead, on stage, by a fan of some kind - who came in yelling about Phil Anselmo, but that seems rather beside the point.

It is very strange. Surreal and terrible. I am not a metal fan, I have heard the bare minimum of Pantera’s music - I remember it as being, like most thrash metal, kind of dull, with moments of flash that don’t quite justify its existence. But I don’t know how fair that is.

But I am aware, from reading various magazines, of Dimebag’s importance in that world. And the culture of metal is interesting in a way - it’s like superhero comics - something that I don’t much care about in itself, but which can be fascinating to think about from outside. And sometimes from inside. So somehow, this comes off all disproportionate to the place he had in my life. I mean - it is always horrible when something like this happens, when someone is shot and killed - but usually, even famous people are strangers to me. This is not like John Lennon’s death - not someone I, personally, cared about in any special way. But for some reason, it looms very large.

Larger, say, than Tupac - who, like Dimebag, I had heard of, heard some music by, considered good enough in his area, just not something I cared all that much about. I don't know why, but Dimebag's death seems more significant, somehow. Is it because it happened yesterday? December 8? Is it the fact that it was a bloodbath - a guy jumping on stage and opening fire on the band and the crowd? Is it because I’d read so many references to Dimebag? Or was I jaded about Tupac, after his arrests and stabbings and feuds and everything, his death came as the logical next step - while this comes completely out of the blue?

Probably a little bit of all of it. What this reminds me of is when I heard that Peter Tosh had been shot, back in the 80s. Tosh was an artist I’d heard a little, heard of a lot more - he represented a whole genre of music (far more than Tupac could) that I respected without knowing much about. And his murder was shocking and strange, came completely from left field - it was very discomfiting, it made me very aware of the sense of losing something I never had. It’s that odd sense of vertigo that comes from having someone who had been a vague presence I should know more about suddenly become real by dieing.

That's how I feel about Dimebag. I don't know how else to describe it. It's absurd and horrible all out of scale with what I knew of him when he was alive.

Heil Santa!

You know, I like Christmas. A lot, actually. For a whole swarm of reasons that I may, if you (my loyal reader(s)) have been really bad this year, I might relate at mind numbing length... And that's in the teeth of, and indeed largely because of, its religious (specifically, Christian [and pagan, after all]) significance - since I generally hold the view that the Universal is found primarily in the Particular. And this generally filters down to not quite approving of efforts to take the Christmas out of Christmas - if you want to be inclusive, I say, be inclusive - put up hanukkah displays, Kwanzaa displays - more is always better, I say....

But then you come across things like this, at (shockingly) Michelle Malkin's blog. She's harrassing, and encouraging others to harass, businesses, cities, etc. who change Christmas specific signage and celebrations to more generic signs and parties. There is a word for what she is doing, and it has 7 letters, starts with f, ends with "ism" and is derived from the Italian word for a stick (as used in the symbol of the relevant political party, a bundle of sticks - symbolizing the old adage, one stick is easy to break - a bundle of sticks is hard to break.) Nor is this assertion of mine debatable. It is the case.

This is a link to something called The Committee to Save Merry Christmas.

You know, when I was a kid, the bad guys - Burgermeister Meisterburger and company - were always trying to stop Christmas. Now... ah yes... what times we live in. When roving bands of evildoers stroll the company demanding we sing "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" on demand. Christmas is a good thing - things like this will put you off your gingerbread...

Why Yes, He Is On My Fantasy Team; Why Do You Ask?

Meanwhile, back on Old Eyrth....

I have to write something about Barry and Jason. Dumbfucks. But then again...

It has been a strange fall for this sports fan. The one greatest thing I could possibly ask for happened - since then - it's been nothing but bad. The big brawl ruined basketball for me. There hasn’t been much baseball news - until today, with Giambi and Bonds (and Sheffield and a couple others) exposed for their steroids use). Hell, even my softball team is embroiled in controversy...

On Ron Artest and company - I think that while I have no problem with what happened to Ron Artest, I also think it is disgraceful that the fans were not punished. Oh, a couple dinks were banned from the Palace - whatevah! What should have happened is that the fans - and the Palace - should have gotten the same kind of punishment the players did: in the wallets. Ban alcohol for a month or so. I think it is reasonable to hold the fans (and the forum - someone should be keeping the peace) to the same standards as the players - being rich should get you no privileges - not being rich ditto. The players got, roughly, what they deserved - the fans involved - and the forum - were just as responsible for the brawl, and should get what they deserve as well...

But enough... what about Bonds and company? None of it is surprising - it’s all been coming. It’s interesting too - was Charles Pierce telling the truth? That these things were legal - weren’t even against the rules? I do believe what he says about Len Bias - an overreaction to a terrible thing led to more bad things... I don't know enough here. I don't have any doubt that things like this - John McCain sticking his nose where it isn't wanted - are all bad. Worse - I can say that without reservation - than anything Barry Bonds or Jason Giambi or Ron Artest (for that matter) have ever done. The government has no place in this. It's bad enough that the NFL is testing poor Ricky Williams for pot - why is that relevant to the NFL? Of course, the fact that pot is illegal is highly troubling, and fairly ridiculous. But this is about sports...

The truth is, I am not sure what to think here. Why, exactly, are steroids illegal? (If they're illegal.) (are they illegal for you and me? if not - why should they be illegal for Barry Bonds?) Or against the rules? Medicine isn’t against the rules - they all get cortisone shots - why should cortisone shots be legal and not steroids?

That is a serious question - though I don’t know who could answer. I don’t know the answer. Why are steroids illegal? The harm they cause people? Maybe - though I don’t know what harm they cause. And why would steroids, with the potential for long-term damage, be banned, and - say - Curt Schilling's ankle surgery - never tried before, so who knows the possible after-effects? - not? And the harm steroids cause - do they? We’ve all heard about it, though steroids seem to have been evolving - at what point do they become safe enough to allow, if that is the issue? And if that isn't the issue - are they banned because of the competitive advantages they give? Well - how is that different from laser surgery - cortisone shots - weight machines - protein supplements - all the things that athletes are allowed to use? The busybodies - the John McCain's - talk about the "integrity of the game" - but what the hell is that? it's purely arbitrary, in cases like this. They're athletes - their livelihood depends on doing certain things as well as those things can be done. You can't single out some of those things and ban them without good reasons, reasons beyond an abstract notion of "integrity". If steroids cause significant health problems - of a different order than, say, 27 knee surgeries - then ban them, yes. If not - maybe the answer is to face the facts and deal.

The second best argument (after the harm they cause) is technological - it may be justifiable to ban steroids for the same reason that MLB bans, and other levels of baseball limit, aluminum bats. (And golf regulates balls and clubs, and tennis regulates rackets and so on.) The game was designed to be played on a certain sized space - if the technology gets to be too good, it becomes dangerous, or non-competitive, to play in that space. That, I suppose, is what is (really) meant by the "integrity of the game" - to keep the technology within certain limits. (The semiotician in me sees this and wants to note: see how long it is before someone refers to this as a "technological" issue in public. They will frame it in abstractions - "integrity" or "cheating" - second order words at best (it's only cheating if it is illegal - the question here is, why is it - why should it be - illegal?). Even when technological issues are discussed directly - corked bats, say - they are always framed as questions of integrity, not technology...) It will be interesting, I think, in coming years, when the Mechanists start impacting the games as much as the Shapers. It's a matter of time, I'd guess, before someone comes up with machines that improve performance - then what? (More of the same - who's kidding? even when every schmuck on the street can get some nifty toy that lets them see out of the back of their head or something...)

All right, all right.... Getting back to the point.... If steroids were legal - what would that mean? Probably that to compete in the game, you would have to use them - to some extent. And that - I suspect - would not be a good thing. For all kinds of reasons. But - at some point - I have to guess it will happen. Though if you get enough rules in place, the athletes will be the weakest people on the planet - everyone else will be using the cream and the clear and only poor Barry Bonds III will be getting in trouble for it...

So to conclude this [very hesitant and waffling] rant... Just a note on their actual effects. I guess if you take someone who is already the best hitter of his generation and give him drugs to make him stronger - well. We see the results. The truth is - I don't know how much difference these things make, in the long run. I mean, they change things - they make these guys bigger, and add a lot of distance to their hits - but, even looking at the other guys who were using... Sheffield and Bonds were hitting way back in the 90s - unless they were using all along, all it did was keep them going a bit - though Sheff isn't much better than he ever was. None of the other overmuscled brutes were able to maintain the level of achievement Bonds did. Hacks like Jeremy Giambi could use all the dope they wanted, they never hit like Barry - or Jason. (Couldn't hit enough to keep himself in the game.) The dirty secret is that, when you get down to it, it's still the skills that count the most.

Though if you have that, and have a magically enhanced body to boot - I guess the results are terrible to behold.

Sygns of the Family?

I have started reading Samuel Delany. Started for a class - Triton was on the syllabus (actually, Trouble on Triton, but I had an old Bantam paperback on hand, and figured I'd save a couple bucks. I don't know what that lost me - a Kathy Acker introduction, which may or may not be worth the expense - and possibly something at the back? I compared them - they both had the appendices, and they looked alike - but are they? I have heard rumors of something by Leslie K. Steiner - a Delany alter ego - in the new version - but is it so? I am haunted...)

I've lost the plot. This is the point. I started reading Triton for a class - read it - liked it, very much (did I love it? in a way. But Delany is an odd case - I have tried reading his science fiction in the past, and not been able to keep at it; something about the self-consciousness of it, makes it, somehow, seem smug - he's too good - and somehow too smug about what he's doing... But that's not fair,a nd part of the point of this post is to note how I lost that feeling.) (So did I love it? in a sense - yes - but Delany's books tend to split, a bit - on one side, a text - sentences running together, creating a story and a world and people - all of this utterly engaging; on the other side something of a treatise on Science Fiction, or The Paraliterary, or, The Novel, or... not that that bothers me as such - I like metafiction as much as the next man, but...)

I can't get this started. And the irony is, originally, I wrote this not to discuss Samuel R. Delany, and still less, my (emotional? or critical?) reaction to him - but because I was reading Delany, and some criticism of Delany, and - coincidentally - via Pandagon - found this: Gender News - a conservative site about gender issues. A week or so ago (getting on to 2 weeks now, I think - I started this note almost a week ago), they had an article up called Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion With a New Face - which basically says it all. Reading within, one finds:

The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion. To demand that marriage means sex--but not children--is to defraud the creator of His joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising His children. That is just the way it is. No kidding.

With that, I'd say, we are halfway, at least, to the line of thought presented in Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (which I have started reading in the wake of Triton: (as described in this essay by Earl Jackson Jr..) "In such a circular patriarchal theology, nonreproductive sexuality becomes associated with blasphemous treason." That's not far from what our Gender News writer, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., said - not far at all. The blasphemy part is there. The treason is implied - but those guys (the religious right) are increasingly pushing for a union of blasphemy and treason.

And doing it all in terms that Delany parodied 20 years ago. They're a creepy lot.

(Jackson cite via Long Story, Short Pier - specifically, this post from almost 2 weeks past...)

One man was chosen...

... and only one man could play him...

Don Knotts in Dubya The Movie - coming soon!

(Via Crooked Timber.)

Despair and 10 Salutes

Today I must mourn the passing of a dear friend - my old Mac 4400/200 PC Compatible. It has served me well, loyally and effectively, since somewhere in the vicinity of September 1997. I have invoked this delightful machine before - in this paeon to Word 5.1 namely - for good cause. I have blogged from it, once or twice! It was - until this week - still rolling along.

It was a matter of time, of course. All it needed was something like what happened this week - a blown fuse - and now, it won't do a thing. No life. That is typical - these machines, macs from the mid to late 90s, were notorious for that very problem. Actually, for two problems - losing the ability to power up, and hard drives that stop spinning. This is the second 4400 in my experience to suffer this fate - the power supplies stop working.

I may get it back someday - or find a working chassis and move the hard drive... But I am resigned to accepting the end. I loved this machine, as much as one can love a machine. I have not used it in the last year - this one (17 inch i-mac - another fairly wonderful machine, that has given me no trouble and better, is a positive work of art) is actually fast enough that I can stand to use it for routine word processing. Amazing. Anyway, in honor of the passing of this wonderful machine, I will post my top 10 favorite pieces of computer related hardware and software. Appalling sentimentality! but if you can't be sentimental at a time like this, when can you be?

1. Microsoft Word 5.1b - this is number 1. Other than spelling, it is still the best word processing program I have ever used. I would probably still prefer it to Word for OS X if it had comparable spelling and macro features. Hell, it had them, back, pre OS 7 or 7.5, or something - somewhere in there, the add ins I was using stopped working. That was when I had to move to another machine to be able to spell... But even without it - it ran on that 4400 as well as Word for X runs on this machine - and probably (with its complete customizability and its magnificent full text searching) had a better feature set. It is by far the best piece of software I know of.

2. Mac 4400 - this machine lasted 7 years. I used it for 3 years at work, then brought it home (we switched to Windows), and used it 4 more - 3 of those years as my main writing computer. I switched tot he internet on other machines maybe about 2001 - but used the 4400 to write on. Great machine. Reliable, fast... it did have power problems sometimes, so I left it running all this time... I knew it could not last forever. I managed to wean myself from it okay - but I will miss it. And - it had word 5.1 on it - and I will miss that more.

3. Mac II-ci: I had one of these for a couple years at work. Most of those early 80s macs had their issues - some because of their architecture (something about their bus capacities, I think); some had bad hard disks, some had unreliable power supplies.... This machine did not give me trouble. I beat on it - I crammed everything I could get into it, used it hard - the system got corrupted every 6 months or so and I would have to reinstall everything - that was a fact of life in those days. But the machine - wonderful thing. Reliable, and probably just as quick with word 5.1 as the machine I have now is. I had to give it up when the powermacs came out - I was disappointed. Partly because I knew that getting the first powermacs off the line meant I would have all the problems, and be the last one to get a new, good one - but partly just because I loved my CI.

4. I have to give props to what I have, though - this 17 inch i-mac is perfectly reliable, and by god - it is beautiful! It really is. Every couple years apple comes out with something just stunning. This is the model. And it works.

5. Powerbook 170 - these were sweet machines as well - great keyboards, reliable, sturdy. I still have one, sitting around somewhere. Unlike my beloved 4400, it still boots up. And runs word like a charm. Surprise surprise!

6. Compaq Armada: There is not much in the windows side of the world that I think is even remotely worth using - but this machine is one. Looks like one of those old PB170s - black, blocky, kind of heavy, but indestructible, reliable, powerful enough. You can’t break them. Great computers. And the last machine of any importance with both floppy and CD bays built in. There are times, even now... Thank you Compaq!

7. SE30. Indestructible little things, quick, functional, and you could get a real monitor on it with a little work. But even without it - those luggable macs had some merits. I would not turn one down now.


8. My new 12 inch powerbook. I know. I love it. Sorry. Tiny, sleek, quick, beautiful. Wonderful machine.

9. Hypercard - this is one I would have to think about some. But when I started using computers - macs - at the end fo the 80s - this was a hell of a program. You could do things with hypercard - I remember building my own spreadsheets, back when I was starting out, and didn't have excel for some reason. I built databases that still work better than databases built in access. It was a great piece of software... I did end up using it mostly to build databases - these days, File Maker has a lot of the same functionality and works about as well - efficient, quick, reliable, easy to work with. I don't know if I can put FileMaker here, but it has a lot of the same appeal. Especially compared to crap like Access.

10. Mosaic. Less because it was a perfect piece of software than because it did things that pretty fucking literally changed the world. The way we interact with the world. Obviously, the way you and me right now are interacting in the world. There may be software that did this back in the 80s - excel maybe - but since I started using computers, this is the one program that, single-handedly, just changed things. And hey - it worked. It did what it did.

The Anti-Lincoln

Here is a rather interesting headline: President moves to rein in 2 agencies. I guess that's one way to put it.

After years of finger-pointing and tension within his foreign policy agencies, President Bush is moving aggressively to tame the two most unwieldy agencies -- the CIA and the State Department -- by installing reliable allies at the helm with instructions to clamp down on dissenting career officials, advisers to the president said.

I suppose no one will disagree witht he basic facts and basic interpretation of the facts in that statement, but the evaluation of those facts and interpretations will vary widely. Joshua Michael Marshall, for example, offers a somewhat different slant than the White House insiders quoted in the Globe article:

There has been a running battle along these 'political appointees' versus 'the professionals' lines at the Pentagon, the CIA and, to a much lesser degree, the State Department for more than three years. And by and large the Bush administration's 'political appointees' have been wrong almost every time. There are a few exceptions at the Pentagon -- the early stages of the Afghan campaign being the best example. But at the CIA it's really been pretty much a shut-out. And a number of those screw-ups have been ones of catastrophic proportions.

* * *

And the upshot of all that we've seen, the result of all those struggles over the last three years is that the 'appointees' are purging the 'professionals'. Another way to put it is that the folks who were always wrong and often catastrophically wrong are rooting out the folks who were often right and sometimes somewhat wrong. The answer to politicized intelligence, it turns out, is a more thorough politicization of intelligence and the elimination of those who resisted political pressure.

Given that -and it seems pretty much the truth - it's hard to read about the President "reining in" anyone without a feeling of dread.

(Should I explain the title? I may. The north during the Civil War was plagued by politically appointed generals. On the whole, they may not have been any worse than the regular army generals and various volunteers who rose to power, but at the top, they were a disaster. A few of them - some purely political, some regulars who were in the politicians' pockets - held real power, and made hash of it. Benjamin Butler - John C. Fremont - quite a few more. The story of Lincoln winning the war was the story of the political generals being replaced by professionals. So - Bush - compared, in some circles to Lincoln - follows roughly the opposite track. For while the balance of competence is about the same in the civil war - political generals are incompetent and dangerous to our cause, professionals (while they cover a range of abilities, and are often an unimaginative lot) more or less do what they are supposed to do - the direction and results are the opposite. The story of Bush losing the war is the story of Bush purging the professionals for the politicians.

Walking the Plank

I see that Colin Powell is resigning as Secretary of State. Powell has not covered himself in glory in this administration, going against a lot of things he had said in the past in the process of supporting them through their foreign policy misadventures. Still, he represents the grown ups in the administration, the possibility, somewhere, of maturity and integrity, and something like good sense. If he is gone --- reading the tea leaves - this looks like a sign that whatever sense there was will be purged. Coming on the heels of the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, with its attendant message about the United States' respect for International Law (heck - Law itself!), this does not bode well.

UPDATE: Looks like Powell's replacement is going to be Condeleeza Rice. I'm sure Bush could have done worse, though perhaps the greatest indictment of this administration is that there's simply no one anywhere near the white house who would be a good choice. It's not as bad as Gonzales, I guess.

Masters of War

Another story that makes you glad to be an American alive in 2004. A Colorado high school band gets a visit from the FBI for singing a Bob Dylan song. Granted, they should probably not try to claim the song is not political - still... still.

The Luxury of Paranoia

I am not one for conspiracy theories, but neither is Kevin Drum, but he's got a post up on evidence about polling irregularities, which in this day and age is hand in glove with voting fraud, so I can link to that. This is obviously an issue that needs to be examined, with a good deal of care. If it's there - let's find out. If not - better to have good evidence for it. In any case - Drum is not up to conspiracy theory hijinks - he is the epitome of the Supremely Reasonable Pundit, and he is Supremely Reasonable here - blaming the exit pollsters, you know. And he's right - if the problems he cites (from a paper by one Steven Freeman) are caused by some kind of systematic flas in exit polling methodology, then - he's right - the pollsters should explain it. And maybe can. If not - if they don't - does that mean they can't? If they can't...

I don't expect this issue to be laid to rest for some time. Bev Harris is up in arms. (So is Black Box Voting, a different site doing the same kinds of things. I'm not sure what their relationship is, or was...) The meme stays alive in cyberspace (Greg Palast say; Long Story, Short Pier - where Kim seems convinced.) I don't know. I worry, though, that the fact that the election results can be ascribed to other things, that they weren't absurd on the face of them, that the Voices of Reason will insist that we have to Move On and stop indulging in Wishful Thinking. All that may be true - but prove it. At least, let's get as much information out there, where we can look at it and think about it ourselves...

Theater of Operations

James Wolcott being brilliant again - or citing Emmanuel Todd in After the Empire being brilliant.

. . . Contrary to those Le Monde intellectuals who see the US as a super-superpower, a hyperpuissance, Todd, a French demographer and author of a book correctly foreseeing the fall of the Soviet Union, says the US has become a "big little bully" incapable of picking on anyone its own size. It makes a show of force attacking the weak--dirtpoor countries with no air defences, such as Iraq and Afghanistan--because a "show" is precisely what it is.

"These conflicts that represent little or no military risk allow the United States to be 'present' throughout the world. The United States works to maintain the illusory fiction of the world as a dangerous place in need of America's protection."

Wolcott cites this in the context of the Fallujah assault - "Operation Phantom Fury" apparently. Wolcott at length:

The US assault on Fallujah is a prime example of what Todd calls "theatrical micromilitarism." I mean, calling it "Operation Phantom Fury"--it's a sick joke. What's "phantom" about it? For months the US has been touting this incursion and publicly built up forces outside the city for weeks, giving the enemy plenty of time to rig explosives and/or skip town. Billing it as a "decisive battle"--another fraud. Guerrilla warfare operates on an entirely different set of rules; as has been oft pointed out, America won every major battle during Vietnam and still lost. What's unfolding is not a decisive moment but a ghastly production that trains hellfire on a symbolic target and "plays well" to American citizens as a flex of muscle, as witness the NY Post cover today of an American soldier with a cigarette dangling from his mouth with the headline "Marlboro Men Kick Butt." Civilian casualties, the destruction of homes and livelihoods, the absence of any significant capture of insurgent ringleaders, these are secondary to getting good action footage over which benedictions can be said.

He is right. This war from the beginning had the stink of being fought because it would be easy to win - not that this comes as any great shock. There's a lot of tough talk from the Bush administration about our foreign policy goals, but even in the middle of the tough talk, there always seem to be a few of the wonkier ne-cons smugging around the sidelines explaining how invading Iraq would send a message to someone that we weren't to be trifled with. That it sent the message to make sure you have working nukes seems to have slipped past these giant brains...

What it means? In the end, it means that these guys really do run everything as theater - as long as they keep the American casualties relatively low, as long as they keep the pictures of American dead off the TV screens, they figure they can hang on to power at home. Use real heroism (and whatever you say about the war, the people on the ground fighting it are running risks and deserve respect) to prop up the image of our strength. Good old "Decisive George Bush" again. Maybe they think they are also projecting power abroad, though Wolcott and Todd don't think so, and I have to suspect they are right. Which is a source of some comfort, since it means they (I mean, Bush and company) are not likely, tough talk aside, to start up any new wars. Just try to flog the one they have. And keep gettign reelected, because Americans don't want to think about the reality of politics or war or the rest of the world. Well - 51% of Americans...

Structural Changes!

Yes indeed! 10 new links on the "blogroll" - 5 in each category. It has been oh so many moons since I have done anything cosmetic to this place. Addabitospiceyknow. Anyway, I try to keep it varied - some science, some law, some politics, some art. We'll see. Into the breach.

Update: Already! changed my mind! added another 5 sites! Culture! A Libertarian! A Real Live Preacher! Enjoy!

And We Can Do It Without a Draft, Too, I'll Bet!

Early nominees for the next set of Darwin awards - via TAPPED here's some comment on the American Enterprise Institute's panel on Foreign Policy in the Second Bush Administration. According to one Thomas Donnelly:

The election proves that the goals set forth in the Bush Doctrine essentially reflect what most Americans want their government to do.

With this mandate, the goal of the second administration is to put actual meat behind the lofty goals expressed by the Bush doctrine. By Donnelly’s estimation, this means expanding the Bush doctrine beyond the greater Middle East and -- here’s the kicker -- integrating our China policy into the Bush Doctrine. While the Bush administration confronts rogue regimes in the greater Middle East, the likelihood of a future great-power confrontation with China is increasing substantially -- so we must act.

Ah, the American Enterprise Institute! Where else could we turn for such wisdom? There's more - after calling someone "Panda huggers", Donnelly adds, “Negotiating with ourselves over China,” said Donnelly, “is even dumber than negotiating with Democrats over social security or tax reform.” He is not, apparently, likely to claim the Reality Based Community as his own...

Wars and Rumors of War

We have begun our attack on Fallujah, delayed until after the election, in case things go wrong (the cynicism of our government is boundless). Accompanied by attacks by the insurgents and the declaration of martial law by the Iraqi government. Wonderful. (Juan Cole of course is following the story.) One thing though - I'm reading the lead paragraph:

U.S. Army and Marine units thrust into the heart of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Tuesday, fighting fierce street battles and conducting house-to-house searches on the second day of a major assault to retake the city from Islamic militants.

Why are the people we are fighting called "Islamic militants"? This is odd - granted, they are Islamic, and they are obviously militants - but is that an innocent combination? Because Al Qaeda, for example, are clearly "Islamic Militants" - their militancy and their religion are inextricably linked. But the Iraqi insurgents are motivated by other things, aren't they? Nationalism or tribalism or their own desire for power or whatever it is - including some degree of Islamic ideoloty... I don't know. Semantics and war are a dangerous combination, but it seems likely that terms like this carry some pretty strong propaganda implications, that I'm not sure I like.

Out in the Real World

Good afternoon. This is not going to be a long post, just a post, without even bothering to put any links in. A new bad habit, I guess, though I am not here to whine. Just to maintain the habit, as it were. There's still plenty of politics I could be posting about - I have not yet worked out a full bore How We Lost The Election and How We Can Win The Next Once post, though I've got one simmering. I have 2 years to work on that, so I'm not going to kill myself. I will note what I hope I do, now that the election is over - write more about other stuff - the arts, movies, music, comics, maybe books. Get back to the real world.

I will take this opportunity to note what I have seen recently, very briefly: Sideways - quite funny at times, interesting enough, even if it is about another 40ish white guy moping about self-inflicted wounds. Thought his guy is affecting - maybe in the ways he comes off as more real than most people on movie screens. Being played by Paul Giamatti is always an advantage, but it's more than that - it's details, like his apartment, his car, the fact that he doesn't have a cel phone. And the wine. Wine is what is best and worst about the man - his passion, but a passion he can't quite indulge in without lording it over people, and a passion which hides, not too subtly, some nasty stuff (the fact that he is a drunk.) So this may not be brilliant, but it is a fine movie, with many surprising virtues... And many big virtues - especially the performances, universally fine.

And Undertow - new film by David Gordon Green, starring Jamie Bell and Dermot Mulroney. Very nearly a remake of Night of the Hunter - here the villain is Josh Lucas as Mulroney's brother, just out of the pen - he shows up, tries to act ingratiating, Mulroney tries to do the right thing - but it doesn't take long for the two of them to be fighting over their father's "treasure" a collection of gold coins. This does not end well, and soon Bell takes to the road with a little brother. They pass through a really down and out south, a step or two ahead of Lucas' thug, passing out books as they go. It's a little bit too derivative, but quite gorgeous and moving anyway.

We Are Not the Country We should Be

I am not going to be a gracious loser. I find it very hard to believe how this election went - how can such a manifest failure as George Bush get that many votes? What possesses people? - and I feel great trepidation for the future. I could blog the future - it may not be as bad as all that. There seem to be three likely outcomes: 1) The GOP, red in tooth and maw, takes everything it can get and tears both country and itself apart - the latter will not be a comfort, because I care what happens to my country. 2) the GOP grows up. Without an election to win, they back off the posturing, address their failures, and try to fix things. If Rummy hits the pavement, or Colin Powell starts making decisions again, this might come about. I'm not holding my breath - but this would not be unprecedented. 3) More of the same! incompetence, posturing, lots of noise, but little concrete action, no risks, good or bad, but lots of talk about risks... everything aimed at holding power, which now gets shifted from Bush to Congress, and whoever will be Bush's successor. Pandering continues apace. Iraq either drags on without resolution, or they declare victory and come home, and leave things to work themselves out. This is all too likely. I don't know if this is better or worse than #1. #1 is more likely to energize the opposition, and more likely to crash and burn, choking on its own greed, as it gulps down one too many metaphors at once.... 3...

The feeling I get from all this is that in the end we (the majority of voters in the country) ended up voting for an imaginary candidate. "Decisive George Bush" - as fictional as Giblets - an image of toughness and resolve that no facts, no revelations of lies and shenanigans, no pictures of the President of the United States unable to act with the country under attack until someone tells him what to do, can ever shake. Could shake. They (not me) voted for this chimera - they voted for what they wanted him to be, pretending, wishing, that he was what they thought they needed.

The fact that John Kerry largely was that man - the war hero, the senator with the guts to take on the administration, organizations like the BCCI and such - made no impression. I don't know why. Mabe because the GOP stayed relentlessly on message. Maybe because the democrats, across the board, saw John Kerry for what he was - their opinions of him ranged from enthusiasm to Anybody But Bushism, but they were all interpretations of the actual John Kerry... Can a real man, good bad or indifferent, compete with an imaginary man? You would like to think so, but the evidence before us says no.

Bloody hell.

Anyway, now, let's just hope the democrats decide that this is the time to fight. That they get tough - call Bush on his crap, resist wherever they can - this is not the time to whimper, well the people have chosen... The people chose a lie. The people were wrong. It is our responsibility to wake the fucking people up and get them to stop doing things like this to themselves.

Election Day

Here we are. Our future as a nation in the balance. Yes, yes, a man's best friend is hyperbole - but there's enough truth to it that I'm not backing off. All the stories about republican vote suppression - their consistent devotion to keeping down the vote - they depend on it - makes me worry. So let's hope the dems get out in force and simply blow Bush away. It can happen. Stranger things have happened. And you want to believe that at least a majority of people know better than to vote for Bush. You have to hope.

On a more personal note - I voted in my current town for the first time. Some kind of club, a VFW or American Legion hall. Paul Krugman has a nice article - "The humbleness of the surroundings only emphasizes the majesty of the process: this is democracy, America's great gift to the world, in action." It's true. The talk about freedom and all in grand abstractions hides the fact that freedom and democracy consists in a bunch of old men and women leafing through sheafs of voter rolls, checking your name off, handing you a ballot... prosaic as hell. It gets you right here!

So off we go! And hope it's clean, and the voting itself is what continues to matter, and not the lawsuits and posturing when it is done. Keep this power in the hands of the voters - don't let it turn into spin, like damn near everything else.