| Tim Slagle is a
stand-up comedian in Chicago. |
|
In this country, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
— It's been interesting watching the 9/11 Commission try to find
out who is responsible for the attack. The whole inquiry is based on a false
premise — that such events can actually be prevented. It's like watching a
group of mad scientists ponder why their perpetual motion machine stopped moving.
— Tim Slagle
| Stephen Cox is a
professor of literature at UC-San Diego. |
|
Media silence on American war criminal
— In case you wonder whether the media have a bias, check the
"In the News" headlines at yahoo.com. Rare is the day on which the top two,
three, or even four headlines are not de facto attacks on President Bush.
For reasons I'm not completely sure about, yahoo.com is my homepage. Lately,
though, one of the reasons has been my fascination with "In the News." To give
you a sample: on the morning after the president's news conference, the top
headline of "In the News" was "Bush stumped by questions about mistakes."
Now, that was the news conference at which the president made a number of
important announcements of Iraq policy. Then, during the Q&A period, he refused,
in response to persistent questions from the "impartial" press, to admit that he
had made mistakes in Iraq. This is precisely what anyone with the least
intelligence would do, even if he knew that he had made mistakes, which Bush
assuredly does. You just don't stand there and confess to errors, knowing that
your political opponents will run the videotape of your admission a million times
against you. But that's not being "stumped." It's not even news. The news was the
policy announcements.
Meanwhile, on April 18's Meet the Press, Tim Russert entertained Sen. Kerry by
playing a videotape of his appearance on Meet the Press during his days as a
radical protester against the Vietnam War. In the recording, a slightly more
hirsute John Kerry says: "There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to
say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other
soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I
conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which
we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I
took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this
is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva
Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by
the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men
who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered
us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the
letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are
war criminals."
An incredible statement, a statement tremendously damaging to anyone running
for president, even 30 years later, especially when that anyone is the person who
has done his best to spread scandal about his opponent's supposed non-performance
in the Vietnam-era National Guard.
Russert asked, "You committed atrocities?"
And Kerry replied, "Where did all that dark hair go, Tim?"
Astonishing.
Admittedly, Kerry managed to choke out an admission that he had "thought"
about "atrocities" "for a long time," and he was now prepared to say that "the
word is a bad word."
But where was the Yahoo headline: "Kerry stumped by own confession"? "Kerry
jokes about 'atrocities'"? "Kerry reconsiders atrocity admission"? And where were
the gangs of reporters, dogging Kerry's steps to follow up on his confession
about his confession?
None of that showed up on my computer.
— Stephen Cox
| Eric Kenning is
a freelance writer living in New York. |
|
Dumbass (R-Tex.) vs. Wonk (D-Mass.)
— Americans, when they are attracted to liberalism at all, are
drawn to liberals who are charming rogues, like John Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
Liberals who are preachy, didactic, or somber, like Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale,
Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore, have a tendency to flounder and sink. This may be
because contemporary liberalism, with its built-in politically correct
humorlessness, its hectoring nanny-state no-noism, and its ponderous bureaucratic
prose, needs the buoyancy provided by charm, wit, and a hint of sexual peccadillo
to stay afloat. That could be bad news for John Kerry. He has a cautious, pensive
manner and a craggy, austere, doleful mien, looking more like a gaunt Byzantine
icon than any politician in living memory. And in his speeches and interviews he
tends to suffer seizures of wonkitis, the potentially fatal Democratic disease of
sounding like an 896-page policy-review-commission report. He's serious and at
best sonorous, but agile wit, mischievous charm, sharp phrasing, and seductive
fluency seem to be out of his range.
On the other hand, English grammar and syntax are out of the range of George
W. Bush, who starts sentences the way he starts wars, without any idea of how
they will end. He's too slow and tongue-tied to come up with an unscripted
witticism or turn of phrase at a press conference when it would allow him to slip
away from a tough question, and he can't even deliver a scripted one with any
finesse. The most clearly unlettered and incurious American president since
Warren G. Harding, Bush has also managed to become the most hated president
abroad in American history and one of the most polarizing within the country,
mostly because of the conspiratorially engineered invasion of Iraq and the
resulting morass. The opposition to him is passionate, and even his supporters in
the administration and the media have begun to take on a furtive, defensive
manner, as if paying tribute to the old journalistic admonition, C.Y.A. (Cover
Your Ass).
The question is whether voters, by November, will be more bored and depressed
by Kerry than embarrassed and angered by Bush. I predict a photo finish. —
Eric Kenning
News You May Have
Missed
END IS NEAR, AUTHORS
CONTEND |
WASHINGTON, D.C. — David Frum
and Richard Perle, in their recently published book "An End to Evil," call for
the United States to invade and occupy an additional 6, 14, 16, or 37 foreign
countries, depending on which page you're on, but the two neoconservative hawks
now admit that they went soft, fuzzy, and touchy-feely in that book. "No more Mr.
Nice Guys," said Frum and Perle at the small, tightly secured space they share at
Reptile House, the influential think tank where they both have fellowships,
located in the Washington National Zoo. Frum, a former Bush administration
speechwriter who has claimed credit for the phrase "Axis of Evil," and Perle, the
glowering Pentagon consultant known around Washington as "the Prince of
Darkness," have disclosed that they are collaborating on a new, uncompromising
book that finally drops diplomatic niceties. In it they demand that America
occupy an infinite progression of countries, if necessary renaming previously
occupied countries in order to have an excuse to occupy them again, and engage in
frantic nation-building projects around the world so as to create brand new
sovereign states to preemptively strike once the existing supply is exhausted.
"Antarctica, with its weapons of mass refrigeration, must not be allowed to fall
into the clutches of penguin fundamentalists who see the world in strict
black-and-white terms," the authors write. "And before we forget we also have to
immediately invade and subdue Nova Zembla, Lutetia, Transylvania, Fredonia,
Ataxia, East Arugula, Outer Ampersand, Flakistan, Stanistan, Umbrellastan, Upper
Lumbago, and Vermont."
The ongoing worldwide military campaign that all this entails, they say, is going
to mean considerable risk, challenge, and, tragically, sacrifice for an entire
younger generation of Americans, as well as a financial burden that will
gradually lower living standards for 99 percent of the country to Paleolithic
levels of subsistence, but that is a small price to pay for security, they argue,
and despite their own lack of combat experience they have volunteered to direct
the entire immense and dangerous undertaking themselves from their table at their
favorite Washington bistro, The Raving Loon.
Their new book, "An End to All Problems, Including Dandruff and Itchy Scalp,"
offers a utopian vision of blissful perfection after a quick, surgical 947-year
military operation. But they firmly deny that they want to "Americanize" the
world, pointing out that they call for theme parks in all American-occupied
countries which will preserve the traditional local culture in nostalgic,
simulated, "fun-filled" form. "The last thing we want to do is to turn foreigners
into Americans," the authors write, "since they might turn out to be the kind of
civil-liberties-craving lily-livered un-American Americans who get in our way
when we want to start another war with foreigners, in which case we would have no
choice but to declare war on them." The prolific authors in fact plan to address
their next three books to foreign critics of the policies they advocate. The
tentative titles are "Who You Lookin' At, Punk?", due out later this year, "You
Got a Problem with That?", scheduled for early next year, and, in late 2005,
"Badges? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges."
Meanwhile, in a related end-mongering publishing development, another prominent
neoconservative writer, Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous 1990s essay and
book proclaiming "the end of history," is finishing up work on a new book. In his
earlier book he argued that, once the Berlin Wall had fallen, there could be no
more challenges to liberal democracy and therefore no more meaningful historical
developments. The new book, titled "The End of History — This Time I Really
Mean It," predicts that there will be no more meaningful historical developments
now that Martha Stewart has fallen. — Eric Kenning |
| | |
