cut on the bias

Okay, this made me cry

This man deserves... something wonderful:

Ford Smith tracked down his late father-in-law's 1978 Porsche 911 Targa and bought it as a birthday gift for his wife, Malena Garcia-Smith.

That's the caption to the photo with the story, but you need to go read the whole thing.

sniff

[Link via Romenesko's Obscure Store]

No doubt fine lying theater

Tim Robbins has written a play about journalists embedded with the troops in Iraq. It's a fine, even-handed look at the struggles of maintaining objectivity while the men and women in uniform around you are your life-savers, friends, comrades in war, and subjects of your writing.

Wait! Wait! Sorry. I had a brain hiccup that allowed me to think for an instant that Robbins was something other than a mush-for-brains leftist hack. Here's what it's really about:

Robbins' publicist and the theater company's management declined to discuss the specifics of the piece, or how he researched it, but speaking in Long Beach, Calif., earlier this month, Robbins said the play "tells the story of embedded journalists in Iraq and the manipulation of truth on the part of our government with regards to the war."

No mention of who's going to play Eason Jordan in the scene where he licks Saddam's feet while off-camera more Iraqis are tortured to death.

A modern morality tale

A French musical artist kills his lover, a French actress, in a fit of rage, ending for them both lives of sexual excess.

It could have been 1600, 1738, 1852, 1967 - but it was 2003, and Theodore Dalrymple, writing in The New Criterion, sees nothing new in this old tale reprised by those who think themselves the carriers of a new, improved morality:

Seldom does life imitate art, or at least pretensions to art, with such fidelity as in the death of the French actress Marie Trintignant. She died recently of the head injury that she suffered in a Vilnius hotel room, after a quarrel with her latest boyfriend, the rock singer Bertrand Cantat. The post mortem suggests that she received several savage blows to the head...

...for her own real life, she had four sons by three different fathers, and had been living with Cantat (not one of the fathers) for a few months before she went to Vilnius...

Cantat was popular in France not just for his music, but for his political attitudes, or perhaps I should say his political attitudinizing... His view of virtue was that of modern man: it is more a question of expressing the right views than of submitting to the discipline of good behavior. Armed with the right views, therefore, a man can do no wrong, and the more vehemently he expresses them, or the more successfully he disseminates them, the better man he is. Cantat’s moral complacency makes Mr. Podsnap seem like an incarnation of Voltairean skepticism.

Of course, Cantat was not the first French public intellectual of “impec” political views to have found that it is harder to be good to the person in your bedroom than about the suffering masses of a thousand miles away...

Both Althusser and Cantat illustrate the new moral law for modern man: that moral concern rightly increases as the square of the distance from the person expressing the concern. Only thus can a man be utterly selfish and egotistical on the one hand and a moral exemplar on the other...

The lamentable case of Marie Trintignant and Bertrand Cantat was deeply emblematic, as the French liberal newspaper Libération correctly recognized. “An intimate tragedy transformed into a collective nightmare,” it said: a nightmare for those, that is, who believed that the social changes of the sixties represented an advance rather than a retrogression. It was, said the newspaper, a sordid end to “the ideal bohemian couple, a marriage of music without concession and cinema without compromise that was fit to carry the dreams of a generation.”

I hate to lower the poetic tone, even by a little, but the case was loud with the sound of chickens coming home to roost.

It's a fine essay on fame, moral relativism and the immutability of humanness, ending with a backhanded kindness that is all the more scathing for its restraint:

Cantat is a victim as well as a perpetrator: a victim of the gimcrack ideas propagated at the time of his birth in 1964, at once pietistic and libertine, that he had not the seriousness, the experience, or the intellect to reject, but which he swallowed whole, as Etna swallowed Empedocles. In this, of course, he was not unlike 99 percent of his contemporaries.

There's just nothing to add. Go read.

Son of a gun poor loser

All I can say is - when you ask is often as important as what you ask.

Neutral about bias

This morning I was talking to the librarian at my school. She is a very smart woman, top in her field, and very very liberal. We were discussing my dissertation topic, media and policing, and also my goal of building a criminal justice research website for popular reading. I specifically mentioned that I want to present current research in plain language, not technical or methodological language, so that journalists will have a place to go for the newest information without having to stop for a course in stats on the way. She agreed that it would be good, and then said, but sometimes they don't want to know. You have to account for bias.

So far so good. Of course I agree.

Then she gave an example of potential media bias...

... from Fox News.

Of course my immediate reaction was to think, "She thinks it's biased because she's liberal. It's her bias happening here." But I listened. I made a point to really hear what she said. And she was right - the example could have been a case of Fox News choosing to present a more inflammatory part of an interview and deliberately cutting out a modifying excerpt. It reminded me that when you deal with bias, you have to be careful not just of left-leaning bias, but also right-leaning bias - and your very own, which ever way it leans. Just because something presents what seems right or logical to you doesn't mean it is right or logical. I hope Fox News has not engaged in the type of egregious pandering that CNN and others have done in places like Iraq. But it's highly unlikely they're without fault in the media bias arena.

It all gets back to admitting bias, and working toward neutralizing excessive manifestations of it (when it's a bad thing, like in covering Iraq). That's the only way to begin rebuilding trust in media. I don't know that it would work, though, because the entertainment imperative is still in operation.

Remembering

It's important for us to remember that although the frequency is lessening considerably, our military men continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan weekly. The Spokesman-Review is keeping a database of all the killed and missing in Iraq, as a part of their warblog (maintained by Ryan of Dead Parrot Society, who is their weblog guru). I started a site to do that too, but I don't have the AP database as resource, and had to set it aside for now (I plan to get back to it and make it a permanent memorial). Starting today, I'm going to feature one of our brave fallen on my site, linked to the S-R blog database - both photo and text will come from there. I encourage you to take some time once or twice a week to browse through it, and thank those who've died by caring enough to know their faces and who they were.

Some of them die in battle. Some die in ambush. Some die from boobytraps. Some die from accidents - but they were where the accident happened because they are fighting our war. They are no less a loss. Here is the first one, chosen at random (and I won't be following any kind of chronological order):

Sgt. Sean Reynolds

Status: Dead
Age: 25
Date of death: 5/3/2003
East Lansing, Mich. U.S.
Service branch: Army
Service force: Active duty
Unit: 74th Long-Range Surveillance Detachment, 173rd Airborne Brigade
Svc. unit location: Camp Ederle, Italy
Status: Army
Date of incident: 5/3/2003
Details: Reynolds was killed when he fell from a ladder and his rifle accidentally discharged.
Location:
Cause: Accident (land)

The Garden State?

It's Sunday afternoon, and my parents are both napping - a typical Sunday pasttime in my family. We've had a great couple of days, seeing parts of New Jersey that are more reminescent of why it's called "The Garden State" - photos to follow. Yesterday was yard sale day. New Jersey has great yard sales as a matter of course (and one of my favorite pieces of furniture is an oak reclining chair I scavenged from someone else's garbage). My parents' van is now replete with NJ finds: an old floor radio that Dad got for $5, a small writing desk Mom got for $20 that she's going to refinish and give to me (yay, Mom!), old tools, ornate serving trays, and - for my little foray, spending a whopping $10 - several pairs of earrings, a 4" gold lame heart sewn with pearls all over the front, books and two rectangular pillows for $1 each that I'll cover with some fabric from that much lauded stash of mine. Dad also got a bicycle free that he's ridden all over the campground.

A good time is being had by all.

It did rain aggressively yesterday afternoon, and again last night. I slept through it all - a mere rainstorm doesn't disturb me after sleeping through 2 a.m. cab hornblowing for four years - but Dad says the cars started trailing out of the campground about 2 a.m. as the rain came down in sheets, no doubt having taken their tents down with it. This morning the mist rose over the lake, and the weak sun shown on rows of empty campsites. Dad scavenged some abandoned firewood from a nearby site (are we seeing a theme here?), so we'll have a fire tonight when we get back.

Showering has been one of the biggest adventures. Mosquitoes are everywhere, as are big moths that like to dive around the lights in the shower stalls at the campground. The shower is set up to spray only when your hand is actively on the pushbutton. I sympathize with their not wanting it on for hours before it's discovered, but I don't think 30 seconds a push is too much to ask. I've gotten my morning stretches in both days contorting to rinse off everything while still keeping one hand on the water button. And I've learned that it's difficult to dry a wet towel when everything is damp from days of rain. Fortunately, I've also rediscovered that you can dry with a damp towel, as long as you don't really mean "dry", and the towel is drier than you are (to start with, at any rate).

I whined about the showers to my dad, and he laughed at me. Which isn't new. He and mom reminded me that when they grew up, they had to take sponge baths (especially my mom - they didn't have indoor plumbing until after she married). Dad recited my great-grandmother's bathing advice: First wash as far down as possible. Next wash as far up as possible. Then wash possible.

Ha. My great-grandmother, the humorist. Unfortunately she wasn't joking.

We drove back to the urban Jersey for church this morning, and to my apartment for between-church napping. We're going to Liberty State Park and then back to church, finally ending up at the campground tonight wrapped in blankets and toasting marshmallows at the fire. I'll leave early tomorrow to get back to work, and they'll head off across Pennsy for home.

It's nice, having a life sometimes. Maybe before long I'll have one more often.

All Hail King Charles!

Deep in the category of "What were you thinking?!" is my participation in Dodd Harris's Fantasy Football league. The fact that I don't watch football, can't play it, don't know the teams OR the players, and think tailgating means riding someone's tailpipe on the NJ Turnpike, did not in any way deter me.

This year, I didn't even choose my players! I had no clue, and couldn't log in, and then when Dodd graciously told me how (without once saying, you brainless female twit!), I ... well... I didn't. But somehow, I wound up with players. And being a competitive sort, I happen to think that my mysteriously chosen players will, naturally, whomp the stuffing out of any other team they happen to "play".

I even named them "Kearny Krushers". Clever, eh?

Well, Charles Austin, the Sine Qua Nonpundit, is also a member of this august league. He put some smackdown on me before our "game", and claimed he would stomp my Krushers. I said, HA! They will live up to their name!

Apparently, their name morphed to "Kearny Krushed" while I wasn't looking.

So I have to pay my dues to Charles, who said I had to say how wonderful and fantastic and totally beyond amazing he is as a Fantasy Football Coach. So, here we go.

He is great! He is awesome! He is THE FANTASY FOOTBALL MAN!

That's right - A Wasteland! I'm Empty Of Knowledge! My Krushers Are Krushed! I AM DIRT!

(collapsing into sobs)

I think I need a couple of days to recover.

Calvin does Bias 101

E.L. Core has a priceless Calvin and Hobbes cartoon about selection bias.

After going there, go here.

Compare and contrast.

(And yes, this is always how image management is done - the media don't have a lock on that market.)

And now I bring you ... down time!

My parents are here visiting through the weekend, camping at a campground out in west Jersey. I'll be more there than here for the duration, after work tomorrow, although I may nip in from time to time. Things have also gotten busy at work, with the countdown to Alabama started and my feeling I need to get my projects to a certain point before I hie off to the land of cotton (away! away!). In the midst of studying for my core area exam, drafting a dissertation concept paper and applying for student loans, I'll be organizing a move and getting rid of half the stuff I own so I don't pay hundreds of dollars to move canceled checks from 1987 and jewelry that would make Tammy Faye blanch (not that you could tell). Right now, I think I could even part with my Colorful Set of Foam Dilbert Characters. Somehow I think three tubs of assorted fabrics will stay intact, though. And my collection of Dean Koontz books. The stone gargoyles will make the trip, as will the faintly flowerish looking metal and glass lamp my friend gave me that doesn't work. But it will!

Three items that will make the trip: the Bybee pottery pitcher and bowl, the cheerful gargoyle, and any remaining tangerine or mandarin lotion or bath gel I have. If it seems the gargoyle is sitting on a shelf grayed by dust, that would be because he is.

Today's question: Should I or shouldn't I send the inflated exercise ball to my parents house for safe keeping until after I move? Of course another option would be to deflate it and pack it in a box. But either of those choices would also mean admitting that I really won't start a full course of strength training next Monday.

This meandering post is really meant to say that my thoughts will be meandering and more scattered than usual for a few months, ditto my time to post, so expect an even more bipolar cycle of posts and nonposts, deep posts and fluff so poofy you have to hold on to the screen while you read it.

Make sure you wipe it with anti-bacterial soap first, though. Don't want to get germs.

UPDATE: Hey! Looks like I'm on the leading edge of a new bloggish meme - stopping to smell the roses! Or, put another way, "having a life offline". Not only am I taking a few days off to visit with my parents, I'm leaving a whole state so I can find roses!

Actually, what Glenn and Stephen talk about is a lot of why I'm moving to Alabama. The other day my boss said, "So, what can we offer you to stay? A $20,000 raise?" Now, he didn't mean that much, but they've offered me a substantial one and probably would go higher if I negotiated. But my only reply was, "Only if you move the whole department to Alabama". My income will likely take a nasty little plunge at least at first - I may have to use dialup even (horrors!) - but I'm going for quality of life. And I'll get the money, eventually, at least as much or more than I have now. I'll never make millions (unless my book sells to Hollywood) but that's never been my goal anyway.

Would I be getting a graduate degree in a social science if money was my point?

Dixie Schticks

From the "And this is new.... how?" department:

The Dixie Chicks say they don't want to be a country music band any more.

Violinist Martie Maguire told Spiegel magazine: "We don't feel part of the country scene any longer, it can't be our home any more."

I have to admit that this whole Dixie Chicks thing bothers me in part because I do like some of their music. And I'm capable of separating politics from art unless an artist uses her (or his) status as an artist to assume a mantle of political activism. If it weren't for their art, who would care what Barbra Streisand or George Clooney thought? They'd be nothing more than man-on-the-street interviews on a slow Sunday news day. But their arrogance and their disgust for things that are important to me, rubbed in my face with an imperious manner, make my appreciation for their art take a sudden plunge. It's as if someone smeared feces on the Mona Lisa - you still appreciate the artistry underneath, but the overlay will send you out of range pretty quickly.

And that's what's wrong with the Dixie Chicks now. They're peevish, whiney, and full of themselves, tainting their (in my judgment) quite obvious talent with a noxious overlay. I can think of a lot I'd like to say, but Jonathan Last at The Weekly Standard has (as usual) said it so aptly that there's nothing more to add:

There are three possible explanations for this latest fit of Dixie Pique. None of them are particularly flattering.

The first, and kindest, is that they're simply sore losers...

The second is that this is the endgame in a calculated marketing shift...

The third explanation is that the Dixie Chicks have decided they don't like the people who buy their records...

When asked how she felt about creating the Bush fracas, Maines told Entertainment Weekly, "It's sort of felt how people say it is when someone dies, how you go through every stage--angry, disappointed, confused. Some days I just feel proud." Later, recounting how one of their tour bus drivers quit in the wake of her comments, Maines said, "It seems unfathomable that someone would not want to drive us because of our political views. But we're learning more and more that it's not unfathomable to a large percentage of the population." Of course Maines is part of that large percentage, too, since she no longer wants to associate with country music...

AT LEAST PART of the impetus for their leaving country music seems to be finding a listeners who will agree with them politically. As Maines gleefully told Entertainment Weekly, "We surprised [the rock] audience as much as the country audience. They never in a million years thought that we wouldn't want to go to war." Most of the time, audiences seek out musicians they like. The Dixie Chicks are shopping for an audience they find palatable.

And Last calls out their future too:

...one thing's for sure: By turning their backs on country, the Dixie Chicks are in danger of mutating into a left-wing boutique act whose audience is more interested in supporting a brand of politics than enjoying music.

I think he's nailed it. We'll revisit this in five years.

Note to self

Do not put active dry yeast in the breadmaker in the evening with all the other dry ingredients, then get up in the morning to start the machine. Your bread will turn out looking like some cylindrical ancient volcano that blew its top centuries ago, leaving a deep, sad and lumpy crater in the center surrounded by a smooth high slope.

There is a reason active dry yeast is sealed in foil and plastic.

Action plan: Croutons?

Amy got married

Tonight I was watching a show about Elizabeth Haysom and her boyfriend, both in prison for killing her parents (they each say the other did it). I thought... I wonder what they're doing now? I looked up Haysom and found that just this past spring she began writing a column for The Fluvanna Review, the local rag for the town where her prison is located. It created a bit of a stir.

Naturally that made me think of Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita who shot (but didn't kill) her married lover's wife in 1992. While on parole, she began writing a column for The New Island Ear; it's since become the Long Island Press, and Fisher is a columnist there. And, just last week, Amy got married.

She may have actually reformed in prison; married, a three-year-old son, a steady job. She mostly stays out of the limelight, and they don't carry a photo of her on the Press site. But be prepared - she's going to be a poster child soon:

...her parole was complete this past January, she announced that she would be working on a cause she is too familiar with—keeping handguns away from minors. She is currently working on a book project about kids and violence.

Look for it in the New York Times Review of Books with an ecstatic review as soon as it hits a bookstore near you.

And Joey Buttafuoco, the randy scum who made it with Fisher while she was under age? He apparently is freaking out women in exercise gyms*, these days. Sadly, he and the missus, Mary Jo Buttafuoco (who really is an innocent in all this), got a divorce earlier this year.

(I love the Internet. It's such an addiction for an information junkie like me.)

I don't know that this is describing a real event; it could well be someone's idea of being cute. But it sounds plausible, doesn't it?

Cleanliness is next to impossible

An interesting (to me) question:

Does living in a somewhat germ-y and bacteria-laden environment give a person more resistance to disease?

When I grew up, we ate a lot of food right out of the garden. Sometimes we just picked something and ate it right there – wiping dirt off a strawberry on my pants leg first, at most. Now, we were very clean. My mom kept a tidy kitchen, and house as a whole, our clothes were clean, the typical middle-class way of life. But dad didn’t (and doesn’t) get too exercised over things like finding a hair in something (pull it out!) or even a bug or two (Just adds a little body to it), if the balance of the product, whatever it was, was in good shape. Cut rotten bits out and eat the rest. Don’t get too picky. Yes, we washed our hands, but you know kids – not always as quickly or as well as we should have, probably. I’d say I put away quite a few little wiggly bacteria with disease potential when I was growing up. And as an adult, I still don’t get too caught up in clinical cleanliness – the health department wouldn’t close me down, but I’ve been known to pick up a dropped chocolate, rinse it and eat it. (Okay, I’d rescue chocolate from a mud pit, but that’s another post.)

We Americans are freaky about cleanliness in general. Even someone like me, who is fairly relaxed about germ warfare, is probably a lot more clean in general than people in some other countries. It’s a cultural as well as a knowledge-about-disease thing. And nowadays we have anti-bacterial handsoap, laundry detergent, household cleaner, floor mop soap, dishwashing detergent, dishwasher soap, etc ad nauseam. So here’s the corollary to the above question:

Are we too clean today?

I don’t get sick very often (what I do get is weird things like an eye stroke and a backside cyst, but again, another post). I wonder, am I just lucky? Or on to something in my refusal to see every hair* in the soup as a contaminant as disgusting and dangerous as botulism? Is it possible I’ve built up some level of resistance to minor illnesses?

*(NOTE! It always depends on whose hair. Some people carry the detritus of years in their thin swinging protein. That hair would contaminate not just the soup, but the entire meal.)

Some reading material:

Answers to your questions about the hazards of antibacterial cleaners
Is antibacterial soap any better than regular soap?
Seaweed inspires antibacterial - Stopping bugs communicating can keep them apart
Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds (Who knew in 9 1/2 Weeks that they were actually engaging in ancient first aid? Don't link to photos of the movie at work!)
Antibacterial soap 'may not work'
Garlic as an antibiotic (Do bacteria have a sense of smell?)
Are antibacterial cleaning products safe?

And, last but surely not least:
Penguins have 'antibacterial stomachs' (So if you're ever lost in Antarctica without your SubZero WetOnes, just kill a penguin and plunge your hands in his stomach before dinner)

(Okay, I have to get into a little diatribe about "9 1/2 Weeks". It's not all that. It's a wannabe. I saw it, and later thought, "That's it? That's edgy and sexy? They're phoning it in!" Could have been that I saw it just a couple of years ago, instead of in 1986 when it came out. But I think the average imaginative couple could come up with more erotic tension, no problem. I found myself thinking, what a waste of good food.)

[And I bet you couldn't write a logical post that includes hair in soup, a penguin and Kim Basinger covered in honey.]

Sending toys to Iraq

Chief Wiggles is asking for toys to be shipped to him for distribution to children in Iraq.

He probably doesn't know what he's in for. I hope he has a lot of help lined up.

He has a list of no-no toys, which is fairly logical: think "poor fundamental religious families in a war zone", and you'll figure out what isn't good - no toy guns, no "Britney Spears Barbie", nothing that requires batteries, you get the picture.

Chief offers some suggestions for toys in his post, and readers add a lot more suggestions in the comments. Some don't know what to send, and have suggested Chief puts a donation link to Toys R Us. If he does that, I'll link it here too.

I think this is a great idea. We wonder what we can do, we send piles of things to our military, we feel a need to be a part of things over there. I have it from one who knows that the military has enough - Lt. Smash said the other night that when he left the Sandbox, there were boxes of toiletries and other things from care packages stacked up waiting for the new wave of personnel. Just too much for the ones there to use. But I doubt seriously that we can send more toys than the children can use.

If you wonder what to send, think about someone you would like to honor by it. When I saw the suggestion of paper and pens, I thought of my artistically talented grandmother who grew up so poor they didn't have paper for her to draw on. She told me about how exciting it was when the family received a letter in the mail, because her parents would give her the envelope to open and smooth out for drawing, and even sometimes the back of the letter. How many artistic Iraqi children thirst for a big supply of paper and art chalks or paints? How many are scientifically bent and would find scientific supplies - a magnifying glass, a science kit - an enthralling gift? Educated and curious-minded individuals are, I think, the necessary foundation for a successful democracy. We can help lay that foundation.

Americans have big hearts, and helping the children of Iraq is an unambiguous good. I'm going to send art paper and pens with a note that it's in honor of my grandmother. What are you going to send?

Latest on the pizza bomb case

Not much is happening in the investigation of the death of a pizza man from a collar bomb someone else apparently put on him. Or, if something is happening, no officials are talking. In the most recent GoErie.com article*, that very fact gives rise to the story:

People don't keep secrets. And Edinboro University of Pennsylvania criminal justice professor Jim Fisher believes the secret surrounding the collar-bomb death of Brian Wells is too good of a secret.

That's why Fisher wonders why the public hasn't seen more of the evidence the FBI and other investigators have gathered in their ongoing search for answers into why Wells robbed a bank with a bomb locked to his neck and later died when the device exploded...

The apparent absence so far of a tip that can break the case suggests to Fisher that one or two things are at play. The first possibility is that Wells and Robert Pinetti, a friend and co-worker of Wells who died three days after the robbery, are connected to the case in one way or another and took all the information with them when they died, he said.

The other possibility is that all of the preparation for the crime took place out of town, which is why investigators seemingly have gotten no good information about the collar bomb, he said.

"Initially I think we all presumed this was the act of some strange local people and just showing the collar and bomb would be enough," Fisher said. "But as it turns out, this is a much more covert crime."

I agree with the covert part. It does seem a bit difficult to crack if it was a simple crime, especially with 50 agents working it, as was reported before. On the other hand, a very simple, straightforward crime can be hard to crack just because there's not much hanging out there to investigate.

We'll keep on eye on this.

In other Erie news, a local woman is apparently involved in the shooting death of her boyfriend, although she says from jail that her handyman and ex-boyfriend was the one who "killed him and touched his body and put him in the freezer". We are assured by authorities that this case is not connected to the pizza bomb case:

Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk said the killing does not appear related to the case of Brian Wells, a pizza deliveryman killed when a bomb locked around his neck exploded Aug. 28.

Rothstein's home is at the start of a dirt road Wells drove down to make his last pizza delivery the day he was killed.

Me, I'm ready to move to Erie myself - nice safe quiet town, lovely neighbors. Anyone want to join me?

* No deeplinking at GoErie.com, and of course no really good way to figure out where old stories went either. It's a sorry sorry excuse for a website. Anyway, this article was linked in the "Yesterday's Most Popular Articles" section at the very bottom of the page, at 8:23 a.m. Who knows where it will be later - it certainly wasn't on the "» !!! Brian Wells Case Stories" page this morning.

Forging a new Iraq

Ann Scott Tyson of The Christian Science Monitor is in the middle of a thoughtful three-part series on the potentials and trials of constructing a new nation without rendering the old one into ashes. Here is the first article; here is the second. The third will run tomorrow.

Libertarianism and fighting foreign wars

Ron Bailey, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Preble, and Ivan Eland discuss libertarian philosophy, the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq on reason.com.

The bottom line is that a libertarian foreign policy ultimately recognizes that support for genuine freedom fighters is the best self-defense.

So what do you think, all ye libertarians who think our military should be defensive only? Does this fall under that heading?

Jackson: NYT is administration patsy

William Jackson Jr., a foreign affairs analyst, writes a scathing analysis of NY Times reporter Judith Miller's coverage of the search for WMDs in Iraq, and beats up on the Bush administration in the process:

Did Miller break credible hard news -- or only flack for hawks in the government, an all-too-familiar role for her over the last two years as she wrote a batch of stories supporting allegations that Iraq was developing and producing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons?

...When I interviewed military officials and journalists located in Iraq regarding the conduct of Miller during the quest for WMD, they did not mince words: "Nobody could stand her." She had an "imperious manner." "She's lucky we didn't shoot her." "She wore a uniform." "She had an exclusive deal with the Pentagon" -- which undoubtedly caused resentment all around.

There would seem to have been no better-qualified American reporter than Miller to follow the quest for WMD in Iraq. However, Miller's journalistic product, and not just her personality and methods, became the most criticized of the war (with the exception of Geraldo Rivera) and the succeeding occupation.

There is some irony in New York Times' Baghdad correspondent John Burns' pronouncement (E&P Online, Sept. 15) that "there is corruption in our business," when he then proceeds to illustrate the underreporting of Hussein's crimes against Iraqis before the war but fails to comment on the over-reporting of administration falsehoods and half-truths in hyping the WMD threat posed by Iraq -- by his own newspaper.

Who is Jackson? Does it matter? I'm sure his assessment is measured and as factual as possible, with no agenda hidden or otherwise. Why do you need to know...

Oh, okay. If you insist.

William E. Jackson Jr. was executive director of President Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control. He writes about American foreign policy and hosts a TV political talk show in Charlotte, N.C.

Like I said - doesn't matter. Does it?

Greenpeace - violating tax laws?

Is Greenpeace in trouble for a form of money laundering?

A watchdog group that monitors non-profit organizations has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that the environmental group Greenpeace is "knowingly and systematically violating U.S. tax laws."

Public Interest Watch of Washington, D.C., formally filed the IRS complaint Monday, asking the federal agency to investigate Greenpeace's non-profit financial practices...

According to PIW's report, the tax-subsidized division of Greenpeace failed to follow federal non-profit tax guidelines regarding its educational and charitable activities.

The PIW report maintains that Greenpeace diverted over $24 million between its various entities over a three-year period for activities that did not qualify under federal law as tax exemptions. The report said Greenpeace engaged in such non-tax-exempt activities as blockading a naval base to protest the war in Iraq and padlocking the gates of a government research facility.

"Greenpeace has devised a system for diverting tax-exempt funds and using them for non-exempt - and oftentimes illegal - purposes. It's a form of money laundering, plain and simple," Hardiman explained.

Sounds plausible to me, knowing how federal grants work. Greenpeace, of course, won't have it:

"It's completely false and without merit," said Melanie Janin, Greenpeace USA's spokeswoman.

"Greenpeace is considering this an attack by a fringe group," Janin added.

That's pretty funny, considering that Greenpeace is a fringe group to a lot of us. But let's move on:

Greenpeace USA also accused PIW of having a "clear anti-NGO (non-governmental organization) agenda," pointing to the recent lawsuits by PIW against groups with similar political philosophies to Greenpeace, like the Rainforest Action Network, the Dogwood Alliance and the anti-war group, Moveon.org.

"While PIW will not disclose its funding sources, Greenpeace strongly suspects that PIW is funded by American corporations, many of which may be under scrutiny for anti-environmental behavior by environmental organizations like Greenpeace," the press release stated.

And having an anti-liberal-NGO agenda is bad because..............? Even if they have it, which they deny:

Hardiman also denied that his group only goes after environmental groups like Greenpeace, pointing to several conservative organizations against which PIW has filed IRS petitions.

"Greenpeace selectively only chose the lefty groups we went after. We also went after conservative groups as well," Hardiman said. He mentioned the Pat Buchanan-led group, the American Cause, and the anti-immigration group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, as examples of conservative organizations PIW has targeted.

It'll be interesting to see what an investigation reveals. A lot of government grants are very loosely monitored (which annoys me mightily), so I find this at least plausible. We'll see. For right now, I'm just glad someone has bitten Greenpeace on the butt. It needed doing.

Sweet, but kind of funny

Jonathan loves Erin. Erin loves Jonathan. It's a tender match with all the twists and turns of a Harlequin novel.

Except it's real, and in your very own NY Times.

Jonathan Frankel and Erin Richards married last Saturday, and the NY Times article on it is just... well... sweet but amusing. Frankel, a journalist, is the son of a former NY Times managing editor, and Richards, a stay at home mom, the widow of a 9/11 victim. The article reads like a book synopsis for a romance publisher. That's the sweet and the funny. Why did they think the average person would be interested? Who is Frankel? Who is Richards? A famous name, a familiar face, a woman in distress and a connection to a national horror. I read the article, expecting at some point to find the point, but... there was none. Just sweet. Just amusing.

I wish them all the best.

Just something to think about

Meryl Yourish is highly annoyed with her electric company for not having her electricity back on several days after Hurricane Isabel. And well she should be.

But reading about her trials and tribulations made me think... it's going to take more than a week for a major utility with thousands of workers, pots of money and a stable and safe infrastructure to restore power to 300,000 people whose homes are already wired and waiting. Now, why is it so bad that just a few months after the end of major hostilities in the Iraq war, the people of Iraq don't have dependable service? After all, the infrastructure is questionable, the number of workers is not high, the environment continues to be dangerous, terrorists are actively sabotaging the work, and even average every day thieves are taking what components are installed to sell on the black market.

Just something to think about.

Speaking of objectivity

Famous journalist Seymour Hersh (living on his laurels, like Bob Woodward) thinks embedding was bad - bad!

...Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, had a different take on the embedding system. “It gave us a great view,” he told the SPJ audience. “Unfortunately, it was not the right view.”

“I really sort of hate to pee on the parade here,” continued Hersh. “But embedding puts us in the place of being advocates. Our job must be adversarial.”

First we have to have a moment to deal with our disappointment that he lied to us - he didn't at all hate to pee on the parade. He did it with relish! He arced high and modeled as if he was going to be plastered on the back window of every souped-up pickup in the South by week's end! He drew a line in the dust with it and then looked proudly back at us, pointing at his bold statement!

Calmed down now? Okay. Let's move on.

Hersh misses some important points here: He does not know what the "right view" is. In fact, there are multiple views and the more information you have the better able you are to see the whole picture. (See, elephant, the describing of by blind men.) The view from inside the military units is just as valid as, say, the view from inside the bar of the Palestine Hotel, where the showered non-embedded journalists gorged on hot meals in their clean clothes chatting about what to make news the next day, in between forays out no more than a few blocks from the hotel to talk to people who may or may not be who they said they were. Would it have been a bad thing for all the war news to come from embeds? Yes, if for no other reason than it would have been a very narrow view. But for Hersh to say it was bad to have embeds at all is very clear evidence of his own bias.

And then comes his little comment about what the press should be: adversarial. In every setting? On every topic? Just what does he mean by adversarial anyway? The times the press actually is adversarial, it's usually when they think there's a career-making scoop hidden away; when the issue or person doesn't close the circle for the journalists' confirmation bias; or when they're showing off for their friends. Yes, there are honest and dedicated reporters. But more than they like to admit are not thoughtful collectors and imparters of news, but rather are fraught with biases, botherations, agendas, career aspirations, jealousies, and a shallow understanding of what they're covering. They pick and choose when to be adversarial. And they usually reserve that attitude for the Big something - Big Government, Big Business. If the organization or situation is something that itself is adversarial to those entities, then much of the media takes an, "The enemy of our enemy is our friend" approach. So to say the media must always be adversarial is to say nothing useful or true at all, because it is not practiced neutrally or evenly at all.

Odd too that Hersh would so harshly criticize the embeds when he himself would probably have liked to have on-the-ground information from such a source when reporting a skirmish in Afghanistan where his reported facts were hotly disputed by the Pentagon. The value of having embeds in that situation was even pointed out by Eason Jordan and Walter Isaacson of CNN. And speaking of Eason, how can Hersh criticize embeds for fraternizing with the subjects of their writing without also excoriating virtually all the journalists who worked in Baghdad prior to this spring's war? Jordan has admitted that his network deliberately left atrocities unreported so they could keep reporters in the country (and to what point? having a presence is of no value if your coverage is systematically skewed as a result - and it is actively lying to your public if you don't admit that skew). Perhaps Hersh would benefit from a sit-down with John Burns, another well-respected journalist who both fought the good fight to cover the truth in Iraq pre-war, was embedded during, and reported unflinchingly the betrayal of America's trust by journalists that was a part of the daily fare of pre-war Iraq coverage.

And along the way to his dubious "high ground", Hersh not only lost his reason, he lost his humanity. Referring to one of the former embedded reporters who were speaking with him at a panel during the Society of Professional Journalists meeting, Hersh had this to say:

Once, when coming under heavy fire, a young Marine turned to Sanders for advice. The reporter encouraged the Marine to have confidence in his abilities.

At the SPJ meeting, Hersh criticized Sanders for crossing the journalistic line by advising his subjects.

That's right. Sanders may have helped save that Marine's life, but Hersh thinks it's just a horrible thing. How is that more dishonest than this, which occurs daily without any acknowledgement by the media? It is much more honest and humane to reach out in the extremities of the battle, and then report it. Because that is truth That is what happens there. And in Hersh's world, where do you draw the line? Do you knock the gun out of the hand of someone about to shoot another, and you have both the strength and opportunity to do so? Or do you just report the shooting? Do you stop an adult from beating a child, or do you just report on the sad condition of the human soul that would hurt a child?

Hersh's criticism of embeds, and his plaint that it compromises the adversarial role of the media, draws from the same well as the endless barking of the objectivity crowd. And no less a personage than yet another famous journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, himself no friend of the establishment, had this to say about objectivity on yesterday's NPR On The Media program* (paraphrased): Today's media isn't like the old time media, which I think was better. But they're getting more comfortable with showing their opinion. (The interviewer asks, are you saying they should just admit their biases and put them out there?) Yes, they should admit their biases.

I suggest we start with Mr. Hersh and which parades he chooses to pee on.

[SPJ link via Romenesko]

* The one titled "Four and Twenty Blackbirds"

"I'm just so jealous I can't stand myself!"

When I had dinner with the Smashes Saturday night, they told me that they were meeting Peggy Noonan for dinner on Sunday night. Well. I was so jealous. But I'm not who I'm talking about in the headline.

Reading about the Smashes' visit with Noonan made me curious again about her son, and who she was married to. I never hear that discussed. So I did a Google search for "Peggy Noonan married". And found this.

Oh, honey. It is the funniest thing I've ever read that didn't mean to be, full of snarks and hypocrisy and whining. What is it? Two classmates of Noonan's from high school who are very liberal set out to put the record straight on Little Miss Thinks-She's-Hot-Stuff-Now. It's so small town, so vicious and personally hateful. Here's a good example - a recounting of when one of them, Monica Finch, now a journalist in Massachusetts, went to see a speech by Noonan and spoke to her for the first time in many years:

I stepped up and looked right into her eyes. Not a glimmer of recognition. "Hi, Peg. Remember me?" I could see her casting back, wildly flipping through her mental Rolodex. Finally I said in an exaggerated faux "Joisey" accent "It's me, Peg. Nikki Finch." Her face broke into a wide smile and she surprised me by giving me a long hug. I had the feeling she was desperately trying to figure out what to do with me. She asked me what I was doing there. We were both trying to read one another. I quickly explained my mission. "You haven't changed a bit since high school," she said. I did not take this as a compliment...

I raised my hand and asked Peg to name other writers who influenced her. First of all, I was surprised when she called on me by name. Later when answering another question from the audience, she said, "When Nikki and I were in high school, we studied …" I couldn't understand why she was making such a point to include me. I was baffled by her attention -- a whiff of noblesse oblige?

After the program, I met her on the stone terrace overlooking the garden and grounds. I took some photos, asked more questions -- all business. Other local reporters took turns getting their stories. Peg was like a turtle with its head stretched out basking in the sun. Obviously she still loved the attention, even at this small-time gathering. After the others left, we spoke personally for a few minutes. She asked about my brother. I mentioned that my mother had recently been treated successfully for breast cancer. She said, "I'll pray for her." It was difficult to gauge her sincerity.

It was getting late and I was on deadline. Peggy had drifted off into gaggles of admirers who pressed around her. I sought her out to say good-bye. She said it was good to see me, blah, blah, blah. I smiled and looked her straight in the eye -- "Peg, don't let them take any more pieces out of you." She looked stunned, as if I'd struck something deeply hidden in her. I turned and walked out. I believe I could feel her eyes on my back.

I'm sure Noonan was stunned - that this former classmate was venturing to comment on her life when Finch hadn't been a part of it for decades (and wasn't very nice to her even then). It was extremely rude, and shows that Finch thinks everything is all about her. Certainly it didn't occur to her that Noonan may be a genuinely nice adult person.

Both women accuse Noonan of, essentially, getting above her raising, yet both make a strong point to paint Noonan's origins as shameful and to be despised - odd for liberals, don't you think? And Gloria Lalumia, the other former classmate, gets in high gear with the "she isn't and never was as cool as me!" teenager mode:

Peggy and I were members of the class of 1968 at Rutherford (NJ) High School. She had transferred in from somewhere unknown at the start of her sophomore year. My mother was a teacher at RHS and she was in her social studies class. Her recollections of Peggy--long, limp hair, a loner who didn't say boo, a B student, someone living over a stationery store downtown, definitely not from the tonier side of WASP Rutherford. As I recall her, she was smart, but could be snippy and superior. In fact, in the caption for her yearbook picture she described herself as "Cool and poised"..."Crusader"..."Very argumentative" with a "Satirical wit" and a future in "Journalism." And, for good measure, she stated that she was a member of "The Resistance."

There's only one problem with this last item: Peggy Noonan was NOT a member of "The Resistance."

Those of us in the VERY small group calling itself The Resistance were, obviously, not among the "in group"--i.e., the football-cheerleader crowd. We were the “nerds” and artists, interested in pushing the envelope in a very conservative time and place: for example, I was editor of the paper, getting hauled into the principal's office for trying to print an article on the crummy state of the boys' and girls' rooms.

Peggy wanted to be in the Resistance, but she was never formally admitted. In fact, none of us trusted her. She was sneaky. She always seemed to have an eye trained on my boyfriend, the most talented artist in the school. You never knew what she really was thinking and she seemed cold and distant even as she spoke to you. I can remember a moment standing at the back of the auditorium, as she earnestly talked to me, seeming overly intense, yet detached.

Since she was not a member, she did not accompany us, the three senior members of the Resistance who cut the baccalaureate service before graduation and burned a sacrificial copy of the literary magazine in protest against the censorship we had had to fight to get the damned thing published. However, in the ultimate proof of her untrustworthiness and blind ambition, she dishonestly named herself as a member of said Resistance in the yearbook!

Was it a desperate attempt to gain acceptance?? Did we drive her to it by not naming her as part of the only Resistance group in the school?? Was this early rejection by her radical high school peers the cause of her going off the deep end and becoming a right-winger of the most obnoxious and toxic sort?

People, they graduated in 1968! The piece is copyrighted 2001! Is 33 years not long enough to get over almost anything that occurred in high school? I would question whether Lalumia's interpretation is correct, I'd say Noonan would have a different memory. The difference is, Noonan probably doesn't remember - she, unlike these two, has moved on.

Here's Finch locked in the 60s:

The most persistent memory of Peggy Noonan while we were in high school is her constant need for attention. She was an indefatigable suck-up with the teachers or any authority figure, a regular female Eddie Haskell. However, our high school the guidance counselor may have thrown down the gauntlet when he responded unenthusiastically to Peg's aspirations to become a writer - "Go to secretarial school." In fact, she did; even worked for an insurance company for a time. But Peggy had a lot of showing up to do.

It's only been 24 years since I graduated from high school, but I don't think I could drum up this level of bitter jealousy for anyone I knew then, no matter what their accomplishments as compared to my dismal state. Sheesh. Lalumia's final line is classic - if you didn't figure it out before, she tells you right where they're coming from:

...each time she comes on TV and just before I switch the channel, for a brief moment I go back to the time when she made eyes at my boyfriend, lived above the store, and WASN'T in The Resistance...I know where you come from, Peggy, even if you've forgotten...

Like a little cheese with that bitter self-hating whine?

On Reagan

TIME magazine puts up front this week a new book featuring some of the 5,000 letters found of those Ronald Reagan wrote over his lifetime. That's a book I may buy. This on his religiosity:

While Bush is widely seen as one of the most genuinely devout modern Presidents, Reagan was sometimes charged with being a phony, one who talked up religious values but was actually a divorced, nonchurchgoing Hollywood type who was remote from his own kids. He tells one pen pal that he would go to church more if he could, but the Secret Service argued that because of terrorism threats he presented too big a risk to other parishioners. Yet elsewhere, Reagan sounds better equipped to lead a congregation than join one. In a 1978 letter, he argues with a California pastor about the divinity of Jesus: "(E)ither he was what he said he was or he was the world's greatest liar. It is impossible for me to believe a liar or charlatan could have had the effect on mankind that he has had for 2000 years. We could ask, would even the greatest of liars carry his lie through the crucifixion, when a simple confession would have saved him? ... Did he allow us the choice you say that you and others have made, to believe in his teaching but reject his statements about his own identity?"

It was suggested to me that Reagan's argumentation here has shades of C.S. Lewis. Certainly it's a more hardline approach than many "religious" have today (and some very good questions too).

And here is something 99.999999999999999% of politicians, as well as others in public life (such as, say, academics), would do well to emulate:

...it may be that one secret to his success, his ability to persuade people, was that he took his beliefs more seriously than he took himself.

I think that is another thing Reagan and G.W. share, but it's not limited to conservative politicians. It's characteristic of people who are genuine, from any perspective, and it's something most politicians today can't quite grasp.

Born in Korea the USA

Interesting:

LOS ANGELES ― In an apparent crackdown, U.S. authorities have arrested 10 Korean mothers who traveled to the United States to give birth so that their babies would be eligible for American citizenship.

The women were held on visa violations, charged with having come to the country for reasons other than stated on their entry permits. U.S. immigration authorities also detained a Korean broker operating here and charged the person, who was not immediately identified, with arranging the trips for the mothers-to-be.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security, and other bureaus including the Internal Revenue Service are focusing on businesses in the Korean section of Los Angeles set up to serve pregnant travelers, U.S. officials said. Korean women, who give birth while on a tourist visa, can exempt their sons from the draft in Korea and gain access to U.S. public education.

The practice by Koreans has been ongoing for years, but now the U.S. government is making an effort to stem it...

As thousands of pregnant Korean women sought to go to the United States to give birth, an industry specializing in helping them was spawned in Los Angeles. No official statistics are available, but industry insiders estimated that about 5,000 births by Korean visitors occurred last year, and another 8,000 as of August this year. A two-month trip costs roughly $20,000.

Explain to me why someone gets US papers just because his mom was in the US when he arrived on the scene? I know it's law, and common - a friend of mine had dual Nigerian/USA citizenship because her parents were working as missionaries in Nigeria when she was born. But at least that made a little more sense; they actually lived there, they weren't just on safari. Or there for the purpose of giving her Nigerian citizenship.

And in this world of terrorism, why is this allowed? We've seen long range planning on the part of terrorist groups - how useful would it be to have a whole cohort of children from Yemen or Syria or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or any other country that harbors terrorists who want to bring down the US have US papers so they can come and go as they please, come to the US for school, move here, after being raised to hate the US in their own country? I'm not saying these Korean women are associated with terrorists, and there are lots of other ways terrorists can get in. But that's one way to get a Trojan horse behind the gates.

Sometimes I get almost fatalistic about our future as a country. On the one hand we have an amazingly effective military, and on the other we keep giving our enemies more and more tools to kill us. This country won't go down because we can't protect ourselves militarily; we'll go down because we didn't all love our country enough to save it.

[Link via Interested Participant]

Smashed!

Last night I PATHed into Manhattan to meet the redoubtable Lt. Smash and his charming and lovely wife, Mrs. Smash. He and I have emailed a lot, about the war and politics and such things, so it was one of those interesting evenings made possible by online interaction - spending time catching up with old friends you've never met. They are both as intelligent and attractive as you've thought, and yes, the good Lt. did repeatedly during the evening call attention to just how lovely, and interesting, and great his wife is. Since he is only a few weeks back from a very long absence, that's to be expected. Fortunately for me, she is in fact objectively those things, so I joined the fan club without so much as crossing my fingers behind my back.

Actually, I bring that up not to embarrass Mrs. Smash (which it undoubtedly will), but to say that is was a lot of fun to be around a couple who so obviously admire each other. They make a good team.

We ate at an Italian place, after they told me "anything but Italian - we had that last night and will have it again tomorrow night". Later I was trying to guide them through Greenwich Village to one of those to-die-for little pastry places down near Carmine Street, but even with a map I got all tangled and wound up taking us in a circle. So dessert was pie at a little diner. A direct quote from Lt. Smash, "I've had good key lime pie. This isn't it."

Indeed.

It's remarkable when you can meet someone for the first time, really, and connect so you do feel like old friends. I hope to make it out to their part of the world before long. Because...

Well, because the Smashes are just smashing.

Not that I would ever make fun...

I just signed up for one of those track your classmates things, and came across a couple of posts by a woman who must have been in school with me, given her age, but I don't remember her. However, she's pretty funny. Here she is on why she joined the military, in a section on wonderful teachers:

Memorable to say the least [gives the name - and no, you can't know] ( a visionary) and a wonderful English teacher. She took us on many journeys without leaving the classroom. Gone with the wind, I could visualize Rhett Butler. She introduced us to Danielle Steel, a beautful, strong female writer that inspired me to join the Air Force and fight! Margarett Mitchell was a 35 year old housewife who wrote about the civil war. Imagine this me..holding my M-16 in the Desert,.. a female. After all I had been in Atlanta and survived the cowboy nights, the dust,the Indian raids, and grill fires with Rhett, and Scarlett Hara's temper tantrums!!!. She has shown us the beauty and strength of a beautiful mind.

And here she is in response to a post on the message board by a guy looking for gay men in the area:

In response to the gay guys in [the] County. I never met any. I lived there 19 years. My family never met any and my friends never met any. If we were to meet one, I guess it would frighten us.

Clearly, this lady did not ask, and no one told her, while she was in the military.

Oh, and she describes her politics as "very liberal". I guess I would have to ask, "As compared to who?"

About today and life

I have a backlog of things to post about, but things keep happening. So here's some of it.

I've decided to move to Alabama. I think I mentioned something about it before, I can't remember, I know at least to some of you I have. My brother moved there with his family earlier this month, and they already love it (even though it's not Kentucky). I reached the end of my rope in New Jersey about 18 months ago, and the knot I tied at the end is beginning to fray. I want to be closer to my family; I want to be able to go over and eat popcorn and watch a movie, to babysit my nieces, to have a picnic on Independence Day, to shop with my sister in law and spar with my brother face to face. And it's also closer to my parents and sister's family.

And it's southern. There's a lot to be said for Yankees, most of it in language I don't use. Ha. Just kidding. Some of the nicest people I know live here and are from here. But I'm a southerner, a country girl, and a Yankee metropolis is no place for me to be. I want to drink ice tea on the porch without hearing a car alarm, I want to be able to say "sir" and "ma'am" without people thinking I'm mocking them, I want to be around people who don't think "grits" is something you do with your teeth when you're mad.

But I don't have a job there. I've been busy the last little bit tracking down things to do to bring in $$, because I'd rather not have another full-time regular-hour job until I'm done with my dissertation. There's a good chance I'll be an adjunct prof at a community college, and I'm looking into freelance grant writing opportunities. It's time to start that freelance magazine writing career too. Part of my time away from here has been taken up with job hunting.

And then there's school. I want to take my core area exam this fall, and write a concept paper for my dissertation so I can get a go-ahead from my dissertation committee chair before I head to the hinterlands. Things are coming together there too, but obviously it takes time and will begin to take more. My goal is to graduate no later than Spring 2005, and maybe - just maybe, if I win the lottery and don't have to work at all - Fall 2004. Then I can get a real job, teaching and writing. And being paid a living wage.

And finally, work continues to be weird. I don't want to get into it particularly, but when I started there three years ago there were 4 full-time people and three interns working in the section. Now I'm the only one left of those 7, and only two additional people are there. The office feels like a ghost town. Just today an intern who had already given notice, on his last day at the office, was fired and escorted out of the building. Freaked me out. So that didn't leave me in the mood to post.

It's a bureaucracy too, all governments are, and I spend a lot of time pushing against walls of civil servants protecting their own little area and not much interested in what needs doing. I can't claim to be the lone little worker bee in the place - a lot of people work hard, and I don't necessarily do as much as I could or should. But it makes it even harder to do what's right when you just get tired of pushing for every little inch when you do.

Plus, and I hate to complain (not really, but it sounds better to say that), but I'm still not completely healed from the minor surgery I had two months ago. That wears you down too.

And then, also today, I had a talk with The Big Guy at work, who hadn't called me in for a sit-down since he ascended to The Job, and he asked me if I was looking for a job. I stammered and said I wouldn't mind having a new job. I hate those situations, I just freeze and go into self-protect mode and find some way not to answer. He says he's going to get me a raise. I said the position needs it. I made it clear that I wouldn't be in that position much longer, but not just how little "much longer" is in this instance. The conversation ranged over a variety of other topics, work related, that made me very very edgy but I can't discuss them here.

So. That's my life. Did I mention I'm working on a baby quilt and a patriotic quillow, in my sporadic spare time? And sometimes I just sit and stare at the television.

But I promise I'll post, at least once a day, through it all.

John Burns scorches the media

On Monday, E&P ran an outstanding oral history excerpt from journalist John Burns, who covered Iraq for the NY Times before as well as during the war this spring. The excerpt is from the book, Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, an Oral History by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson. Burns is caustic in his criticism, although it's clear that he is not down on journalism as a whole:

Terror, totalitarian states, and their ways are nothing new to me, but I felt from the start that this was in a category by itself, with the possible exception in the present world of North Korea. I felt that that was the central truth that has to be told about this place. It was also the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here. Why? Because they judged that the only way they could keep themselves in play here was to pretend that it was okay.

There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.

In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories -- mine included -- specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper.

Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance. CNN's Eason Jordan's op-ed piece in The New York Times missed that point completely. The point is not whether we protect the people who work for us by not disclosing the terrible things they tell us. Of course we do. But the people who work for us are only one thousandth of one percent of the people of Iraq. So why not tell the story of the other people of Iraq? It doesn't preclude you from telling about terror. Of murder on a mass scale just because you won't talk about how your driver's brother was murdered.

It's nice to see a professional, obviously talented and competent journalist nailing Jordan for his self-serving op-ed that earned him a coy, "You are so bad, Eason! even from such critics as the ethics group leader at Poynter Institute (whose comments I trashed here and here). And what's even more refreshing is seeing him actually reporting on journalists like they purport to report on everyone and everything else - straight and unflinchingly.

It comes as no surprise to us - or shouldn't - that journalists were catering to Saddam and his crowd while they were in power. Some were likely doing so because the perqs were fun; some because they saw it as necessary to advance their own careers (as getting tossed out of Iraq for being truthful might not); and some because they dislike the US, and have a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality. A follow up piece by E&P says that Burns' comments were widely covered after they were published - as well they should be - and added that E&P had received more email on this article than any other they've run. And they reprint some of them. All are worth reading, but you'll like this one:

John Burns' "There is Corruption in Our Business," is a brilliant, important contribution to American journalism at a critical point in the history of our country ... and our craft. A salute to him for writing it, and to you for publishing it. It is my hope that this outstanding piece of work will reach the widest possible distribution and readership.

Dan Rather
CBS News, New York

Yes, ole Dan Rather. Praising criticism of the media.

Now, praise is cheap. One of the best ways to get around having to change something is to fawn and gush over the person who criticizes you, then carry on as usual - most people don't have the attention span to realize that they were just snowed. To deny or resist often calls more attention to it. So possibly journalism won't change.

But I think this kind of transparency is going to become more common, now that the Internet takes all manner of news straight to the people, and legions are tracking media misbehavior. Suddenly the opaque profession, the ones who stand behind the mirror they hold up to society, find they are now standing behind clear glass, and we can see all they do. Disconcerting for them, pushing the profession toward more honesty which is better for us. This, you see, comes on top of Jordan's admission, which was followed by the whole Jayson Blair debacle. Wham. Wham. Smack. Oh yeah.

What needs to happen next is that someone tracks down who did those things Burns identifies, and fries them just like Jayson got it. It'll only happen if someone external to the media outlets involved does it, though. The media giants have to measure the damage to their brand name of revealing that their correspondent was a lying Saddam patsy. They don't want to see it - collectively, anyway. There may be a few, like Burns, willing to take the heat such bravery brings. Very few, though, with sufficient statue like Burns to protect their jobs.

Bernard Goldberg comes to mind. Of course he does, especially since Dandy Dan was so vicious about Goldberg's book. The main reason for the different reception is this: Goldberg's book was an ugly backhand across the mouth to people he felt had wronged him; he was personally hurt, and the book - to me, anyway - sounded vindictive and petty. I didn't finish it. I'm not saying that he wasn't treated badly, and I do believe he identifies precisely the major source of bias in the media - it's not a deliberate effort to mislead usually, but a worldview that is so pervasive in their circle of colleagues and acquaintances that it seems neutral and mainstream even while it is flagrantly liberal to people outside their circle - which is most people. Their reporting reflects their worldview, and they are too blinkered to see its skew.

Burns speaks with an anger and passion because he thinks his profession was damaged, truth ignored and a horribly ill-used people left to their own devices while Western media kowtowed to their oppressor. You don't get the sense that these people hurt him personally and he is speaking of them vindictively. The intensity of emotion is the same; Burns' take is, actually, more journalistic - a reporting of what he saw, and his reaction to it, without making it about him. Perhaps that will come, if vilification follows his honesty.

I see this as very encouraging. And you will find, as the years progress, that this war just past created a rift in the world of journalism - there are those who were embedded, and learned that perhaps their world view was not the only valid one; and there are those who did not embed, and see something shady about eating MREs with an American military man but nothing wrong with eating caviar with a man who kills children and cuts out the tongues of poor family men.

Which would you rather hear from?

There were, of course, non-embedded journalists who covered the war honestly and morally. They will be more neutral in the rift, although the more honorable will lean toward the former embeds. It has the potential to be a sea-change in journalism. I hope the tides flow toward truth and honesty, no matter how it affects a career or reduces the perqs.

[Kevin McGehee had a few words on Burns' article here]

Gross - yet satisfying

Jim Bowen of NoWatermelons, knowing my grisly* interest in all things forensic, alerted me to the Autopsy Report, the blog of a pre-med student interning with a medical examiner's office. He talks about the cases he's worked on, and answers questions. It is most incredibly cool. BUT NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART AND STOMACH! Nor, actually, for those of tender sensibilities.

Now, I am actually well-endowed with all of those things - tender heart, stomach and sensibilities. I get nauseated using microfiche (the scrolling gives me motion sickness), and have little interest in the entertainment value of things like executions (the notorious Faces of Death videos, for example). Action movies, yes. Real life cruelty in process, no.

But the human body, what effect various happenings have on it, how scientists unravel the mystery surrounding the incidence of death - now that's enthralling.

So, check out Autopsy Report. And if you're really interested, check out The Virtual Autopsy. Here's photos of a real autopsy. If you're completely engaged by the body in death, check out these photos of a cadaver several days dead at Rotten.com. WARNING! VERY GRAPHIC! I MEAN IT!

I read through those things last night just before going to bed. Very bad idea. Very very. Ack.

And sorry for the general lack of posts this morning. I came in to find my desktop overtaken by ants. So I have been conducting my own execution mission with bug killer (safe around Food! Children! Pets!), rubber gloves and rags. Seems to be under control. For now.

* Just a peeve about grisly. That is GRISLY with an S! Any time it is spelled with a Z, it means either a type of bear or a shaggy person who looks bearish. So. A grisly death scene. A grizzly bear. A grizzled man. There is no such thing as a "grizly scene" - unless a lot of bears are involved.

(Climbing off my soapbox)

I'm a prayer-slut!

Remember Revolve, the new biblezine for fast-track teens who find the Bible "freaky" and too long? Christianity Today has a great article analyzing both the phenomenon of such products, and looking at what Thomas Nelson Bibles embedded in the 'zine for its own benefit. And those of you who aren't interested in religion will still find it a fascinating marketing tale:

On page 186, the girls can find "Top Ten Great Christian Books." C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers haven't made the list. Top honors go to Witnessing 101 by Tim Baker and published by Transit Books. In fact, all of the top ten books have been recently published by Thomas Nelson, most of them through Transit Books.

Here's another curiosity: The eighth of the top ten great Christian books is titled Why So Many Gods? Its authors are Tim Baker and Kate Etue. Kate Etue is also the senior editor of Revolve. She was the one promoting the biblezine on CNN recently.

On page 231, in a blurb called "Issues: Religion," teens are told about "a cool book called Why So Many Gods? that will explain a lot of it for you." It's the same book that made the top ten list!

Hmmmm...

At least Thomas Nelson doesn't claim it's "just a Bible":

It's not a magazine. It's not a Bible. It's not even a study Bible, Whaley told me. It's "an inspirational and motivational Bible product."

There you go. A Bible product. Kind of like a cheese product - cheese but not really. So this is a Bible but not really. And as is clear to anyone operating with clues (which not all teens do), any Bible with commentary in it is advocating a certain philosophical position about what the Bible says. This one goes a little far even for me:

Add to this a great sense of caution over girls and guys praying—yes, praying—together present throughout the book. The editors published the opinion of a boy in "Guys Speak Out" who believes that girls and guys should not pray together before engagement! Another boy, when asked if girls and guys can pray together, advises everyone not to "get carried away."

There you go. I've prayed with men I'm not related to, and I've married none of them. I'm a prayer-slut.

The article makes the good point that some people may start a serious search for God after an introduction to the Bible through this 'zine. That's all for the good, and I don't diminish the value of that. But that has to be measured against the harm it can cause, in a variety of ways, not the least of which is trivializing the Bible's message. Perhaps they could have achieved their goal with a little more class - and reverence.

[Link via - of course - Theosebes]

You don't say

I just sent an email back to a government agency I deal with regularly, and noticed this on the end of an official notification email from that agency:

Again, please do not reply directly to this message as your reply will not reach us. (Please Note: if you respond to this email do not change the subject line, thank you)

Our government: holding your future in the palm of its hand. Don't you feel comforted?