Cathy Seipp, in memorium: This afternoon, the news we've been dreading for almost two years came to pass. She fought cancer tougher than LaMotta fought Robinson.

And when she shall die,
Take her and cut her out in little stars,
And she will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

My post on Cathy Seipp's importance to local bloggers can be found here; it's the best tribute I could possibly give to someone who meant so much to local journalism, and whose impact transcended partisan or ideological lines. I miss her already, and I can only say that Maia will always have a friend from this quarter. She was 49.

UPDATE: LA Observed has a thorough list of tributes from her friends in the blogosphere, here.

It turns out the motion picture industry isn't the most decrepit entertainment medium around. At least that downturn will fluctuate from year to year. As Kevin Drum points out, CD sales are tanking, big time, and the on-line market that has replaced it is in much better position to appeal to consumers than its counterpart with films.

Where my interests collide...the Criminal Bar of London will present a reenactment of "The Trial of Bardell v. Pickwick" at Middle Temple Hall on Sunday, April 1, 2007, featuring a number of luminaries from stage and screen, including, among others, Phoebe Nicholls !!! It costs only ₤50, but that's practically nothing when you consider that it's all for a good cause (helping impoverished law students), and that there are starving kids in China who would kill just to see the Great Phoenician Diva line-read classic Dickens for a couple hours. So those of you from Lambeth, Notting Hill, Winchester, and Suffolk, and other locales that anonymously visit my site each week, seeking info and commentary about England's most criminally underutilized actress, get off your butts and put your money where your interests lie...or if you would like to contribute to helping out an impoverished bankruptcy lawyer, then just click the button on the right-hand side of the blog, just below the "My Space" link.

MLK, Concern Troll? A poster at Daily Kos illuminates why Dr. King's tactics were so successful in the pursuit of liberal goals. [link via Donkee Rising]

I am one of the vast majority of Americans who has no intention of seeing 300 anytime soon, least of all in a movie theatre. I haven't been to a movie since Jesus Is Magic convinced me that Sarah Silverman might be a tad overrated, and I don't see what it is I get for $10 that I can't get with my monthly cable bill, where I don't get overcharged for parking and popcorn. So my critique is based not on the film's merits, but on what I understand its political message to be.

The film, as I understand, is about the Battle of Thermopolae, in which 300 Spartan warriors defended a narrow pass against the onslaught of thousands of soldiers from the Persian empire 2500 years ago. Some see the depiction as an allegory for the present-day war in the Middle East, in which the Spartans are: 1) the progenitors of "the West", defending freedom and democracy from the onslaught of the Persian hordes; or 2) the ancestors of the modern-day insurgents/terrorists, defending their liberty from attack by foreign invadors. Since the Nazis had a hard-on for the Spartans, emulating their policies on eugenics and militarism, it's good to remember that the modern day totalitarian state is every bit the creation of our Western Civilization, so both views might be right.

But there is another tie-in with Nazi ideology that I thought I would mention, and it has to do with the villain of the movie, King Xerxes. It seems strange that this film would be so embraced by neo-cons everywhere, considering that he is described quite differently in that cornerstone of Western Civilization, the Bible. As anyone who has ever attended Sunday School, CCD, or celebrated the Festival of Purim, the same Xerxes who is portrayed in the movie as a monomaniacal god-king, a prancing and swaggering homosexual, is also the enlightened ruler who stopped a conspiracy within his own palace to exterminate the Jews living in the Persian Empire.

One would be hard-pressed to find a foreign ruler who is described as sympathetically in the Bible as Xerxes the Great (or Ahasuerus, to use the Hebrew name) is in the Book of Esther. Not only was his wife one of the great heroines of the Bible, but it is also written that her uncle Mordechai "was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed." Almost certainly, the Coalition of the Willing that advanced with Xerxes onto the plains of Greece, and won the Pyrrhic victory at Thermopolae, included Judeans. No wonder the Nazis identified with Sparta; when things began to go south for the Germans at Stalingrad, it was the Spartan's desperate defense at Thermopolae that Goebbels used to rally the troops.

So why isn't AIPAC denouncing this film? Why is Abe Foxman silent? Here you have a film committing a blood libel on one of the best friends Jews ever had in the ancient world, a global superpower five centuries before the birth of Christ whose alliance (at least according to Biblical legend) with the descendents of Abraham was comparable with that of the United States today, and no one is up in arms over the Jimmy Carteresque portrayal of noble King Xerxes?

A day like any other, on the set of I Heart Huckabees:

Natalie Nelson, thou art avenged !!!

Two of the three Finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism (both from the L.A. Times) nominated themselves, beating out the critics who had the official nomination from the paper. [link via LA Observed] But of course, we already knew that all it takes to get "nominated" for a Pulitzer is an application and a $75 fee.

For those of you who plan to drop off the face of the planet the next four days, in deep immersion in college basketball, here's a bit of arcana for you: John McCain's personal brackets. His Final Four are the four Number One seeds, and he picks the higher seed in almost every game. For a conventional pool, that's not a bad strategy, since it assures the player of consistent results throughout the NCAA's, with an almost absolute certainty that at least one of your teams will get to the Final Four. It discounts the first round, when most of the upsets occur, to almost complete insignificance, while boosting the later rounds, when form begins to reassert itself, and number one and two seeds tally the lion's share of points.

In a small pool, then, McCain stands a good chance of finishing in the money, although there has never been a tournament in which all four Number One seeds made it to the Final Four. Even in the sort of mega-pool he's engaging in, he will likely finish in the top half, although with many thousands of people participating, the odds that at least one player will correctly pick all four Final Four teams are almost certain. Some "maverick."

Which is one of the reasons why most sophisticated pools don't operate in that fashion; in order to reflect the wild, random nature of March Madness, a player who picks only the favorites shouldn't be allowed to reap the benefits over those who seek out the upsets that make the event so unique. In the pool which I participate, the first round is apportioned by seeding, not by the number of correct guesses. If you pick a 12-seed to beat a 5, you get 12 points. If you think Kansas is going to squeak by Niagra on Friday, you get one. People who correctly pick upsets benefit, although the real key is nailing the 8-9 and 7-10 games. After the first round, the scoring is proportional and based on successful guess, which is S.O.P. in most pools.

Purgegate ?!? Tapped and Kevin Drum, rolling out the same cliched suffix for use in a serious scandal...show some pride, will you?

Worthwhile Republican Initiative: If you live long enough, eventually a miracle will happen. Of course, you have to go deep into a state legislature in the Midwest to find it, but kudos to Rep. Kim Meltzer for proposing to do away with the idiotic, albeit unenforceable, legal ban on college basketball tournament pools.

Since I began this blog nearly five years ago, I've been wondering when more famous people would take the plunge. I don't mean pundits or journalists, or other people who write for a living, but honest-to-goodness amateurs with nothing but some free time and a desire to share themselves with the outside world. Well, two who have taken the plunge recently are David Byrne, who sporadically updates his site with Digbyesque posts about the war and related matters, and now Curt Schilling, future HOF pitching ace for the Boston Red Sox. Schilling seems to be plunging into the new media full throttle; here's hoping he can maintain this pace over the course of the season, and give his readers some idea what the everyday life is for a baseball player. And if he feels obliged to drop one of his right wing opinions into the mix, I guess that's the price to be paid.

Right now, the focus on the White House's purge of the US Attorneys has been on the sleazy manner in which the firings were handled, and the possibility that it may lead to the cashiering of Attorney General Alfredo Gonzalez. The firings are coming to symbolize the brazen abuse of power by this Administration, and the unchecked arrogance that characterized the first six years of Bush's tenure in office.

But even more important may be the long-term ramifications this scandal will have on the Republican Party. You see, US Attorneys not only serve a very important role within the bureaucracy of the Justice Department, they also hold a very key position in the pipeline for future stars in the judiciary and in the political system. Each of the people who were fired were Republican stalwarts, attorneys who had proven their partisan bona fides in the past. These were lawyers who were being groomed for bigger and better things.

And now, these same people are being told that this Administration, the same cabal that wouldn't fire Rumsfeld or Rice or the numbskulls around Cheney, no matter how stupid or incompetent they were, was using "job performance" as the excuse to terminate their careers at Justice. It isn't just humiliating; it's needlessly insulting, and it's being done to the best and brightest in the Republican Party, the men and women who were going to be the future Cabinet secretaries, federal court judges, and elected officeholders for the GOP. And the people who have the ignomonious distinction of replacing them will hold tainted positions, and accrue none of the benefits of the position. For a party that has been atrophying at its lower ranks the past few years, this scandal is akin to a major league baseball team seeing its farm system wiped out in a plane crash.

Matt Stoller spotlights a potential "Sister Soulja" moment for Barack Obama, allowing him to kill two birds (Al Sharpton and the loonier elements of the blogosphere) with one stone. A twofer like that doesn't come along every day. Sharpton is one of the more toxic political elements in New York politics, and a huge reason why New York City hasn't elected a Democratic mayor since 1989. The netroots are good for energy and money, but are impossible for a serious campaign to manage, as Ned Lamont found out when his campaign was flushed down the toilet after one of his bloggers drew Joe Lieberman in blackface.

And it's not like either constituency is going to vote Republican, or stay home, in 2008. Obama has been particularly good at counterpunching, as Hillary Clinton and John Howard can attest. Responding to an attack by Sharpton or one of the uberbloggers should be like shooting fish in a barrel for the Illinois Senator.

To answer Ezra Klein's question, he's the best actor ever to have a successful political career in the U.S. If you ever saw the "Wise Guy" story cycle he was featured in, you know he'll fit right in with the mainstream of the GOP.

Why not Boy-Girl-Boy-Girl?

Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine are mixing it up at the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

For future hearings, Democrats and Republicans won’t sit on opposite sides of the dais but rather, next to each other — alternating Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican etc.

In a joint statement , Chairman Lieberman, an independent, and ranking Republican Collins, said “In the last election, the voters said they were sick of the partisanship that produces gridlock… So, as a start, instead of sitting on opposite sides of the room like a house divided, we want the American people to see us sitting side by side as our committee members work together make our nation more secure and our government more efficient.”

Of all the things you can say that the last election was about, voter revulsion at gridlock wasn't it. From 2002 to 2006, we didn't have divided government; we had a unitary executive branch that pretty much did whatever it wanted, and an acquiescent legislature that rubberstamped whatever the Bushies put before them. There was no gridlock, and certainly no desire to make policy decisions easier for the party in power to enact. The voters were in no desire to hold hands and sign Kumbaya with current Administration.

The theme of the 2006 elections was the virtue of divided government, and a demand for a more partisan opposition. The voters weren't demanding an end to gridlock; they were voting for its restoration. Bipartisanship, in spite of what many of the mouth breathers on the left and right might suggest, isn't an undesirable goal, since, after all, consensus solutions to problems are the ones most likely to endure. But the 2006 election wasn't about finding a bipartisan solution to, say, the war in Iraq, it was about bringing American boys and girls home from Iraq, pronto.

Doing the Lambeth Walk: Traffic has been a little slow lately, but one advantage to that is I can track who's visiting, and why. One of the more inexplicable patterns has been the frequency of visitors from the Lambeth section of London, a place I've never visited, usually for the same 2004 post. Do I know you? Does all London internet traffic get filtered through Lambeth? Is Lambeth a hotbed of interest concerning the subject of the post? A couple of years ago, I was getting several visits a day from someone at a Norwegian college, which was equally inexplicable; I never wrote about topics relating to Scandinavia, and I'm certain I don't know anyone from that country. Then suddenly, it just stopped, and I never found out why I had such a devoted fan.

I don't want to put my fan(s) in Lambeth on the spot, but I am intrigued. Since I now have a MySpace page, as part of my continuing quest to reach that most vital of all demographic groups for political bloggers, feel free to contact me there, or e-mail me. I won't bite, and I probably won't even laugh at you. We can talk about the recent closure of the rear yard of the Lambeth Town Hall, or the pro-Labour surge in the town hall elections last year, or whether on a typical early evening millions of people do indeed swarm like houseflies round Waterloo Underground.

Is David Irving Next? Remember that convention of Holocaust deniers that took place in Iran last December? You know, the one that included several rabbis, and all the merriment that caused on "The Daily Show"...well, AIPAC, perhaps the most important lobbying group for the state of Israel, is throwing its annual shindig this week, and one of the featured speakers is Pastor John Hagee, an evangelist who blames Jews for the Holocaust, and supports a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran because it will speed up the End of Days.

But he supports Israel. According to Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, “I think there is a role for him. He has earned a certain recognition with the community because of his support for Israel.” Foxman, who has become a shill for far right causes in recent years, went on to tell The Jewish Week that "It’s a friendly platform. I’m sure an overwhelming majority may be pleased with what he says.”

Nuff said....

Hands down, the worst video ever:



It's safe to say his career was never the same after this debacle.

Since we're coming up on the fourth anniversary of the war, I thought this would be a good time to look back at what I wrote the day the war started, at least to see how prescient I was at the time:

D-Hour has passed, and our country is about to go to war. Here are a dozen things we need to keep in mind:

1. Saddam Hussein is bad, and he has bad intentions;

2. Iraq has not attacked us, and is not presently attacking its neighbors;

3. Iraq has not been shown to be involved with the attack on September 11;

4. For the first time in our history, we are attacking a nation that is not engaged in hostilities with us or its neighbors; in fact, we are not even claiming a pretext that they are, as we did with Mexico and Spain in the nineteenth century;

5. There has been no failure in the inspection regime under Resolution 1441 to require that we go to war this instant;

6. The U.S. withheld evidence from the inspectors that might have made discovery of WMD’s possible, but didn’t provide it so as to not minimize the case for going to war;

7. The difference between the relative strength of the US and Iraqi armies is enormous; we are literally going to be tearing the wings off of a fly;

8. Many thousands of civilians will be killed;

9. Most of what we will hear being reported on American television will be untrue, especially in the first few days of conflict; overseas reporting, even Al Jazeera, will be more accurate;

10. No matter how lopsided the battles will be, each soldier and sailor has family back home, who will be worried no end over the fate of their loved ones, EVERY DAY OF THIS WAR;

11. We will discover the full extent of Hussein’s brutality and tyranny when Baghdad is “liberated”;

12. History will not look kindly at us for our prevarications used to justify going to war, for our manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to justify these acts, and for the bloody-minded lust that this Administration has pursued this war.

I am amazed at how well that held up, considering that I don't make any claims to being a foreign policy expert, and especially considering how bad my predictions usually are in those things that I do pretend to have knowledge, like sports. Of those, only number six, with its assumption that there were WMD's in Iraq, seems to have fallen short. And while I correctly predicted the cakewalk our army would have getting to Baghdad, I didn't foresee the size and scope of the subsequent insurgency, possibly because I couldn't believe the Bushies were so completely devoid of competence.

Still, not too shabby....

The idiotic convention of affixing "-gate" to any bad act by a government official (ie. "Traitorgate", "Filegate", etc.) proceeds apace with yet another scandal involving the Bushies.

The Libby Verdict: Guilty on four charges of perjury and making false statements to the Feds. Sullivan and Drum react.

The conventional wisdom that Libby will draw out the appeals until after the 2008 election so he can get a pre-inaugural pardon from George Bush before he leaves office is probably correct, but it hardly matters. Libby doesn't seem like a guy who's going to rat out his superiors anyways, so the prosecutor's ability to get him to turn state's evidence is diminished, a reality Fitzgerald seemed to recognize at his press conference after the verdict. Since the only reason for Libby to lie the way he did in the first place was to protect Dick Cheney, anyone with an IQ in double digits can deduce that this whole controversy resulted from the Veep's desire to cover up his role in the fabrication of pre-war intelligence.

By itself, that's impeachable. We don't need Scooter Libby's testimony in some future criminal case to make that stick. Pardoning Libby will be the final nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's historical legacy, that of a cabal which stressed certitude in the face of doubt, at the cost of many thousands of lives and, potentially, the greatness of the American experiment.

Charter Schooling: Those who call for privatizing our public educational system might well examine four model schools from back east:

The N.C.A.A. announced Monday that it would no longer accept transcripts from two schools that had sent dozens of talented athletes to high-profile college athletics programs.

Kevin Lennon, the N.C.A.A. vice president for membership services, said that Lutheran Christian Academy in Philadelphia and Prince Avenue Prep in Pickens, S.C., which use curriculum from Accelerated Christian Education, did not have a high enough standard within that curriculum. Neither school was given “model” or “quality” status by the organization, which is why the N.C.A.A. said it would no longer be accepting transcripts from them.

(snip)

Records from American Academy High School in Miami and the now-closed Florida Preparatory Academy in Port Charlotte, Fla., both of which did not respond to repeated N.C.A.A. requests for information, will also not be accepted.

Darryl Schofield, the coach at Lutheran Christian, said that his school had become an unfair target of the N.C.A.A.

“This is ongoing, ridiculous and stupid,” Schofield said of the N.C.A.A.’s decision. “It’s a waste of my time.”

He said he did not know about the latest decision until a reporter showed him the N.C.A.A.’s news release Monday. He said that the school changed locations and that the person at the community center where it used to be was throwing away its mail. Lennon said Lutheran should have informed the N.C.A.A. of the move.

Lutheran Christian Academy and numerous other prep schools came under increased scrutiny last year after investigations by The New York Times showed that athletes were receiving high grades for little or no work. Four players told The Times that Schofield was their only teacher and that they were not required to attend classes.

Nothing brings back memories of school days more than thinking of the community center where your dear alma mater was situated.

The 60's, as we've come to know them, wasn't hippies in tie-dyed shirts and nude fans sliding in the mud at some mega-rock festival at an upstate farm, or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or anti-war demonstrations, or black men in afros and berets demanding to off the pigs.

This was the real 60's, in all its great and terrible beauty:

Romney-Coulter 2008 ?!? Apparently, it's under consideration:


And always remember, "we're not Sunni and Shia here."

Things to be proud of:

I have been called -- my kids are all aware of this -- dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the month, hate-filled, warmonger, Neanderthal, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. And I can just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly.

--Sen. James Inhofe [R-OK]. It takes a special quality to surpass Ann Coulter as the most frightening and loathsome figure to speak at the Bundist Rally CPAC convention last weekend. Inhofe continued to channel his inner David Irving before an enthusiastic crowd, calling man-made global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people," and denouncing the Bush Administration's recent decision to list polar bears as an endangered species.

Damn the Swiss !!!

Conservative blogger (and attorney) Patterico demonstrates why you can't judge a blog by the comments it generates, although I doubt he intended to.

I'm proud to be an American....

Matt Welch, who's written the book on what a virulent authoritarian streak John McCain possesses, strikes again. Concerning McCain's support/authorship for the plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, in absolute defiance of public opinion, Welch notes:

The significance of the McCain Plan transcended horse-race politics. It was a microcosm of the Arizona senator’s largely unexamined philosophy about the proper role of the U.S. government. Like almost every past McCain crusade, from fining Big Tobacco to drug-testing athletes to restricting political speech in the name of campaign finance reform, the surge involved an increase in the power of the federal government, particularly in the executive branch. Like many of his reform measures—identifying weapons pork, eliminating congressional airport perks, even banning torture—the escalation had as much to do with appearances (in this case, the appearance of continuing to project U.S. military strength rather than accept “defeat”) as it did with reality. And like the reputation-making actions of his heroes, including his father, his grandfather, and his political idol Teddy Roosevelt, the new Iraq strategy required yet another expansion of American military power to address what is, at least in part, a nonmilitary problem.

In short, McCain would represent a continuance of the Big Government conservatism championed by George Bush, not a new direction.

A good analysis of why the next Republican to be elected President will likely continue shifting governmental policy to the right on abortion and birth control, regardless of whether they're pro-choice (Giuliani), pro-life (McCain), or whatever position happens to be convenient for the time being (Romney). An unwillingness to buck the party's base will probably extend to lower Federal court nominees as well, but the article is less convincing on the subject of the Supreme Court.

It is correct that when Republican Presidents have focused on ideology over competence, they've gotten what they wanted, as the Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas selections indicate. But unlike other judicial nominations, the Supreme Court focuses a great deal more public attention, and the political temptation to court a faction outside the party's base is usually too important to resist. The five previous Republican Presidents each nominated justices who were either liberal (Brennan, Stevens, and Blackmun) or right-centrist (Stewart, O'Connor, Powell, Souter and Kennedy), each of whom played a role in enacting, or reaffirming, Roe v. Wade, and even the current occupant was more than willing to nominate a less-than-ideological pick (Harriet Miers) the last time out. Six of the nine judges who ruled on Roe were GOP appointees, four of them by Nixon, and seven of the nine replacements for those justices were nominated by Republican, anti-abortion Presidents. And yet, Roe still stands, thirty-four years later, sturdy as an oak, and unlikely to be overturned by the Supreme Court anytime soon, regardless of whom President Giuliani or McCain nominate. [link via Tapped]

Play Ball:

Actually, Sash, I’d like to have some porn for me to watch while she sucks my (expletive). I’m into watching two gals together in a movie. Can she have that there?

--Tommy Lasorda, according to the soon-to-be-published memoirs by "Hollywood Madam" Jody Babydol Gibson. Lasorda is denying the entire account.

Atrios' "Wanker of the Day" has long gone from being a biting slam at a perceived enemy, to a backhanded honor at a foe whose words have cut too close to the bone. It's the lefty version of Andrew Sullivan's old "Begala Award" or "Sontag Award," which the Brit would give to honorees back before he discovered the Bushies ran torture camps. In other words, it's an honor to win the damn thing; only pundits and bloggers who won't shill for The Cause get so recognized.

Today, the WOTD went to Richard Cohen, for a post-Oscar column chastising his brother pundits for labeling Al Gore as a prevaricator and exaggerator during his Presidential run in 2000, and all but calling the former Veep a hero for his patience and integrity. What's wrong with that, you may well ask? Well, according to Media Matters, a website whose typical post goes something along the lines of "Giuliani Interviewed by ABC News, Not Asked About Bernard Kerik or His Three Wives," Cohen didn't mention that he too was critical of Gore during the 2000 campaign. Its examples: that he criticized Gore after the first debate for implying that he had visited the site of Texas wildfires with the head of FEMA, when, in fact, he had only visited the state of Texas with an assistant head, and that in two 1999 columns written more than a year before the election, Gore seemed to him to be uncomfortable in his own skin.

To show how exactly wankerific Cohen is, Media Matters went so far as to point out that Cohen had specifically exonerated Gore of the charge of him being a liar, discrediting some of the more bogus charges against the Vice President during that election. But Atrios either ignores that part of the post, or doesn't get this whole "nuance" thing, and gives Cohen his eighth WOTD, many for reasons just as specious and petty (including this column, in which the evil pundit comforts a girl who dropped out of school after failing algebra).

So in the world of Prof. Black, anyone who has ever said anything critical about Al Gore is not only immediately suspect, but a "wanker" to boot. Don't like him picking Joe Lieberman as his Veep? Wanker. Thought his dithering response to the recount in Florida cost him the election? Wanker. Hold the mistaken belief that his stage moaning and mannerisms helped him pull defeat from the jaws of victory in his first debate with Bush? SuperWanker !!!

I believe that Black originally desired that the WOTD Award be cutting and incisive, instead of a cheap stunt to avoid actually posting something thoughtful and substantive, which Kevin Drum or Digby do almost every day. I think a certain laziness creeps in when you run one of the uberblogs, a temptation to just go through the motions and belch out random "Wanker of the Day" or "Heh. Indeed" or even just "Threads," mixed in with a link from Media Matters or a clipping from Glenn Greenwald or Tom Maguire (and to understand the full extent of the falloff in quality, take a look at Eschaton in the week before the onset of hostilities in Iraq, here). You already have the traffic coming in, so why bother giving a rat's ass if what you're doing is elevating the public discourse.

It seems that being tougher than deer jerky on the campaign trail is more important than attending junkets with Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and other blowhards. In a little over two weeks, Obama has obliterated Clinton's lead among African-American voters, halving her overall margin among Democrats.

The good old days, before the blogosphere, back when debate was polite, civil and respectful:



From the coverage of the Democratic Convention, August, 1968.

The fact that NBC is willing to spend $10 million on a reality show concerning Posh Spice's move to Los Angeles is disturbing on so many levels, the least of which is that it will parade before the world some of the lamest parasites and wannabes of my hometown. Why are all the Brits who try to crash Hollywood (or the Big Apple, as Toby Young so deliciously recounted) such pathetic losers? Why can't they all be like Dame Helen? Oh well, I guess the spotlight can also be the best disinfectant....

The sort of advertising In-N-Out couldn't hope to buy:



But no fries with the Double-Double? And is that a bag of Lays next to the sparkling wine? That's a combo that will send even a Queen to an early grave....

According to a blogger who was offered the position before Ms. Marcotte, the Edwards campaign knew exactly who it was they were hiring when they made the decision. That really doesn't speak well of their political acumen.

ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

MUST CREDIT SMYTHE

ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

I have it from an unimpeachable source that Babel will win the Oscar for Best Picture. My source is the ultimate insider for this sort of thing. Let's just say that it's as if she's already opened the envelope, if you catch my drift...UPDATE: Never mind. She's telling me she's just guessing, and has no real clue who's going to win. I'm such an idiot for believing her.

Back when variety shows were ubiquitous on American TV, occasionally you would see pairings like this one, between two giants:

I believe this might have been Dylan's debut on network television....

An opinion of a non-Academy voter:

"A lot of the mannerisms were right. But the problem was the walk -- Forest didn't get that. My father strides and his hands would go like a paddle because of his wide shoulders. Whitaker is knock-kneed -- my father was bowlegged."

--Jaffar Amin, son of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. He returned to Uganda in 1990, and now makes a living, swear to Kobe, doing voiceovers for advertisements. My essay on other scions of deposed dictators can be found here.

Rabbi Haggard? The Rude One is on to something, concerning this quote from a Michael Medved op-ed:

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her. (emphasis added)

Besides the offensive bit of racial stereotyping ("love machines of the National Basketball Association"?), Medved seems to have a complete lack of knowledge about what straight men are doing when they take a shower in a public place. They're trying to wash up after a game or work-out, not hoping that some Charlize Theron-lookalike will walk by and give them some complimentary wood while they're soaping up with the boys. Who wants to advertise their shortcomings to the world? It's a question of modesty.

The New York Times is reporting that former Mass. Sen. Edward W. Brooke is still alive. Others who this day yet live include him, her, him, her, him, her, him, her, and him. Him too.

Rocky Roid.

Did you know there's actually a country where the children of the nation's leaders go and fight when their country goes to war? It's called, "The United Kingdom." Kinda blows your mind....

Melissa McEwan, the "other blogger" in l'Affaire Marcotte, has been getting the bum end of the stick in this whole controversy. Unlike Marcotte, she never posted anything that could conceivably be termed extreme or bigoted against the Catholic Church (a point reiterated by that noted lefty blogger, Patterico), and her role in this matter seems to be that she was just another woman whom Tom Donahue and the other bundists of the far right could bully. Her opinions may have been left-liberal, and she may have taken no prisoners on her blog, but surely that cannot be justification for seeking to blackball her from mainstream political activities.

But the post-resignation articles all seem to lump the two of them together, as if her calling the Pope on the Church's recent history of anti-gay persecution, or decrying what she termed the "Christofascist" element of the GOP, was somehow indistinguishable from a blogpost denigrating the Virgin Mary. Death threats, never justifiable no matter how rancid the commentator (right wing or left), are especially odious when targeted against someone who has done nothing to merit any sort of scorn. It doesn't take a Cal Tech grad to figure out that lumping her and Marcotte together may have less to do with what they had written and everything to do with the fact that they were young, talented, and blunt women.

Ladies and gentlement, the ever-credulous Howard Kurtz....

Fox to Air Fake News Show: How will we tell the difference?

And now, the feel-good hit of Spring 2007:

Mensteala: It's hard to watch this video and not feel sorry the guy, no matter how wealthy or famous he is. Like watching Jerry Lewis, or Adam Sandler, or seeing Whoopi Goldberg host the Oscars....

An interesting take on the problems Mitt Romney will have with the GOP base, which have got nothing to do with his flip-flops on abortion or gay rights.

It's not a blanket slam on Catholic dogma, nor a foul-mouthed tirade clothed in self-righteousness, but this is my effort to forever disqualify myself from working on a Presidential campaign:

Nacht und Nebel: A prof from one of the SEC's finest law schools has a modest proposal to solve the Iranian Problem: Death Squads.

Marcotte Resigns: No surprise there. A campaign blog, or any sort of corporate/institutional blog, has to be bland and inoffensive by its very nature. And she was clearly not that. The only other justification to hire her would be if she had a proven ability to manage and format a weblog, something that Kos has almost patented; obviously, if Pandagon was "losing" half of her controversial posts because its archives were busted, then she's not the person to bring in to set up an entirely new website. Having her "resign" after the heat has died down (while keeping the other blogger, who doesn't appear to be guilty of anything other than being anti-Christianist) allows the Edwards camp to claim they put up the good fight against the Giant Fascist Noise Machine without having to worry about losing Pennsylvania or Ohio the next time their spokeswoman decides to mock the Immaculate Conception.

UPDATE [2/13]: And now the other blogger has resigned. Since there was no recent post on her weblog that would justified any further right wing outrage, the proximity of the two resignations is most curious.

Francis Urquhart Dies: Ian Richardson, the star of the one of the greatest black comedies ever to air on television, "House of Cards" (and two fine sequels), passed away over the weekend. Dame Helen Mirren paid tribute to him last night after accepting her BAFTA honor, calling him her "mentor", and tearfully saying that she doubted she would be where she was today without his help early in her career. He also played the treacherous mole opposite Sir Alec Guinness in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", and starred in both the movie and the original theatrical production of Marat/Sade. But he will always be remembered for the line, "You might well think that. I, of course, could not possibly comment," which F.U. would always repeat whenever he was called upon to give an off-the-record (and invariably false) slur upon the reputation of one of his rivals in the "House of Cards" series.

What a start for the Obama Campaign !! First John Howard, now Cornell West, who thought that the election of George Bush in 2000 would be better for black America than Al Gore. All Barack needs now is to get denounced by Tony Blair, and he'll have poodles in three different countries yelping at his heels. [link via Steve Gilliard, who is very disappointed that Obama is trying to win the Presidency, rather than appeal just to black voters, and that he chose to announce his campaign at the home of that noted racist cracker, Abraham Lincoln]

The Order of the Phoenix: Ralph Fiennes, who when last we met had just ended an eleven-year relationship with a 62-year old woman, has apparently joined the Mile-High Club with a 38-year old Qantas stewardess. [link via HuffPost]

OBAMA !!! What's not to like? He was right from the start on the war, he doesn't employ wackjob bloggers whose opinions would have been more at home in some nineteenth century anti-Fenian salon, and his campaign says this, about the empty suit running Australia:

"If Prime Minister Howard truly believes what he says, perhaps his country should find its way to contribute more than just 1,400 troops so some American troops can come home," he said. "It's easy to talk tough when it's not your country or your troops making the sacrifices."

That was in response to John Howard's assertion that if he was "al Qaeda", he would praying be praying for an Obama victory in the first primaries in March, 2008. Howard faces a new election himself later this year.

This is a journalistic low, even for Howard Kurtz....

I've never been all that impressed with John Edwards. His mediocre campaign in 2004 for the Democratic nomination barely raised a sweat on John Kerry, and his bid for the Vice Presidency provided no benefit whatsoever to the ticket. L'affaire Marcotte can be looked at two ways: he either didn't perform due diligence when he hired her as his campaign blogger, or he knew what he was getting, didn't think statements like this would effect his ability to get out his message, and now must humiliate her and cut her loose.

There is a double standard here, one that I think liberals must insist on: that any platform or ideology based on compassion and concern for those least privileged, the hallmark of progressive politics for more than a century, has to have as its spokesmen people who walk the walk as well as talk the talk. So of course the right is free to have bigots like Michelle "V-Dare" Malkin and William "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity" Donahue as its public face, and John McCain can employ an extremist as his bloggissimo. Modern conservatism doesn't pretend to be compassionate towards human suffering, and so who can begrudge its candidates for playing to that crowd. On the other hand, liberalism without civility is a contradiction in terms.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a defense of the Edwards bloggissimos, and more questions about some of the hatemongers hired by Republicans to do the same sort of work. What a lot of Marcotte's defenders (I haven't read much of the other blogger to judge one way or another) seem to be missing isn't that she has "made controversial or profane remarks in the past," but that she doesn't seem to have an "indoor voice" to begin with. A politician like Edwards wants to win elections, and if one of his employees has a history of making remarks that offend the religious beliefs of a core constituency of your own party, he must act quickly before the problem metasticizes.

There is an important role for the Marcottes of the world, to roil the waters and shake up the false consensus that restricts our political debate. Some people have to go too far in their rhetoric, if only to show up the mealy-mouthed among us for our complacency, and Pandagon often succeeds in doing precisely that. But if that's the path you want to take, you must also understand that other doors will be closed to you, and that the heavy lifting of actually getting something done will be performed by the policy wonks and the "concern trolls" you routinely mock.

UPDATE [2/8/07]: Not fired, at least for now. The two pretty much had to repudiate everything they had previously written on their blogs as "satirical in nature" for which they are sorry if anyone "was personally offended." In the future, this may neuter other talented bloggers who wish to join campaigns, and people who take their political writing seriously may find the "satirical in nature" language hard to swallow. But the kids stay in the picture. My respect for the courage of John Edwards, if not his political foresight, has just gone way up.

Why has John McCain spent his political career bashing our troops?

Classic music video, from the King of Kool:

Super Bowl LXI: FWIW, the Chicago Bears owner, Virginia McCaskey, is a diehard Repubican, while Colts owner Jim Irsay has largely contributed to Democrats. The teams' stars go the opposite way: Peyton Manning was a Corker man in the last cycle, while Brian Urlacher's one contribution went to a Democratic congressional candidate two years ago. It appears that Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are skinflints when it comes to politics, but Mike Ditka isn't; he has been a reliable GOP donor for years. [h/t via Daily Kos]

CHEWBACCA BUSTED !!!!

The phenomenum surrounding clubs that cater to under-21's is explored here, including a profile of Jim Smith*, proprietor of iconic hipster hangout The Smell in downtown Los Angeles.

*Brother of me.

We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney. If this is true (and suffice it to say that FBI agents are trained to ensure they accurately account what they are told by witnesses), Cheney's top aide confessed that his boss told him the identity of a CIA agent, then aggressively lobbied to have her outed to the media on the most specious and petty of grounds. The Bush Administration is going to have cut this guy loose pretty soon or their whole closet is going to begin smelling.

Media Matters is a useful website, especially when it examines the assumptions behind many a false cable news report, but it would do a much better job if it got it's tongue out of the anus of the Democratic Party. A female Presidential candidate rhetorically asking how she is equipped to deal with "evil men," and alluding to the husband who was brutally disparaged by his foes while he was President, and who, on numerous occasions, betrayed their wedding vows, but whom she still loves, is being witty; it's taking a potential weakness (her marriage-of-convenience to Bill Clinton) that's on the subconscious of everyone in the audience, and making a self-deprecating reference that lightens the tension.

On the other hand, perceived references to "Ken Starr", "Newt Gingrich", "Dick Cheney", et al., aren't witty; they're banal partisan jibes. Regardless of what Hillary Clinton intended, the joke is only funny (and she did say she was trying to joke) if the "evil men" line refers to her husband. The Democrats already pay people whose sole responsibility it is to generate propaganda for the party, so unless Media Matters is getting a healthy stipend, it isn't worth it to be compromising it's integrity on something so silly.

You know you have an especially thin skin if you get all angry and emotional every time the President refers to the "Democrat Party." If it's a slur, it's an extremely petty one. More than twenty-five years ago, when I was working for a Democratic state legislator, we would "push poll" Republicans and identify our guy as the "Democrat candidate." It enabled us to inform the person at the other end of the phone that we were honest-to-goodness, rock-ribbed Republicans of the Bircher stripe, and thus made it easier to stick the shiv in when we asked if it would effect their vote if they knew the GOP candidate was a Klansman, or performed abortions, or whatever it was we wanted to communicate.

As Congressman Miller said, it's code, like flashing gang signals, that indicates the speaker is from the far right. It's not like being called the n-word, or using the word "Jew" as a verb or adjective, and the number of people who are so identified with that amorphous ideological blob known as the Democratic Party who could rightly take offense is so minuscule as to be irrelevant.

Far be it from me to criticize the sources of revenue for the local government, but the County of Los Angeles last year made a profit of $3.6 million in fees from online searches of Superior Court cases. Most judicial districts either give the info away for free as a public service, or charge a nominal fee. Sweet.

Resistance Is Not Futile: A good exegesis of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act (BARF), here. It's a good take on what an honest judge can do to when confronted by a statute drafted by morons:

The problems with the 2005 Act are breathtaking. There are typos, sloppy choices of words, hanging paragraphs, and inconsistencies. Worse, there are largely pointless burdensome new requirements, overlapping layers of screening, mounds of new paperwork, and structural incoherence. These are dark days for all bankruptcy professionals and both judges and debtors' lawyers are on the front lines. Resistance is key to self-respect as well as necessary to keep the system operating in ways that catch abuses while providing bankruptcy relief, at the lowest possible cost, to those who need it.

The main problem with BARF, the article notes, is that it was drafted by the none-too-bright hired guns of the credit industry, who focused primarily on granting their clients' wishlists rather than designing an intellectually consistent (but perhaps politically less palatable) law. By enacting a poorly-crafted law, Congress gave judges the freedom to interpret the law in a manner different from how the credit industry lobbyists and their vassals in Congress may have intended, relying instead on the reasons stated for its passage, on the record (ie., to "protect consumers" and "reduce fraud").

A.A.R. sold, Franken leaves: The new owner is the brother of perennial New York candidate Mark Green. Franken's show was the only good thing about the network; about half the programming for the LA affiliate is non-AAR (ie., Stephanie Miller and Big Ed Schulz), and the few times I listened to the carwreck they aired in the evenings, it seemed little different than dittohead agitprop for lefties.

Apparently, St. Joseph's going to do the old "National Interest" thing in the next election. Pretty big of him, don't you think? What was Gore thinking....

Paging Gretchen Mol: An absolutely cruel take on west-Pennsylvania native Sienna Miller, in Defamer. Vanity Fair has always been good at spotting It Girls-Who-Never-Were (remember Sophie Dahl?), as well as other trends that never quite got off the ground, a tendency memorably recounted by Toby Young in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. To wit, this month's cover girl is "hot" actress Demi Moore, recently snubbed by the Academy for her stellar work in Bobby, and leading the casual reader to wonder why Ellen Barkin or Cher weren't available for the shoot.

Sorry, but the headline, "Key Tapes Said to Exist in Bush Case," is particularly lame. It's not even hearsay evidence; it's the hearsay possibility ("said to exist") that hearsay evidence exists (that is, the "key tapes") that may circumstantially prove Reggie Bush's family was receiving money at some point during his career at U.S.C. And the underlying Yahoo!Sports story is even thinner gruel, since it's based not on what anyone has claimed on the record, but on the fact that during discovery, "at least one of the witnesses was asked to produce 'any recordings in (his) possession of conversations between Lloyd Lake and Reggie Bush, Denise Griffin, or LaMar Griffin.' Denise Griffin is Bush's mother. LaMar Griffin is Bush's stepfather." In fact, asking the other side to produce any recordings that may be in their possession is asked in almost every civil case, and is part of the standard form interrogatories in California civil cases. Duh.

It may be too late for Zach Lund, but WADA has agreed to relax anti-doping sanctions that result in suspensions for athletes who inadvertantly ingested (or ingested trivial amounts of) stimulants tangentially found to improve performance. The group also hinted at possibly reducing the punishment for positive tests for cannabis, a drug with no known performance-enhancing characteristics in Olympic sports, but which has been tested at the strong urging of American representatives.

Eric Alterman points out that Bush's approval ratings are now less than half of what Clinton's were at the same point in his Presidency, which also happened to be when his impeachment trial was taking place.

Among the suitors for the Tribune Company's stake in the LA Times is Rupert Murdoch, apparently. Considering the financial mess his paper in New York City has been, or the clusterfuck that was News Corp's prior trusteeship of a local Angeleno institution, there's no reason to believe he will do much to stem the paper's continuing brain drain or its falling circulation, and as his cable "news" channel attests, he never has been one for practicing actual journalism.

Congolese Yellow Cake: It would be interesting to see how the Mutombo Myth got started, since I doubt anyone in the White House was clever enough to invent it. Since the final five minutes were all I saw, a good question would be whether anything else the President said bore any resemblance to the truth. [link via Hotline]

Today was the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the death of LBJ, and the Foreman-Frazier title fight (ie., "down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier...."). I wonder if there are any other historical dates that had three distinct, unrelated events that were as momentous as those. Roe was perhaps the biggest Supreme Court decision of the past fifty years, and Foreman's stunning knockout of Smokin' Joe not only crowned a new heavyweight champ, it also helped resuscitate Mohammed Ali's career. But the big headline in the paper's the next day was Johnson's death, only two days after his second term would have ended had he run (and won) in 1968.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....

Your sister is a thespian !!! I didn't believe this guy was still alive, until he wasn't...in all fairness, Smathers did deny ever accusing his opponent of having a thespian relative, or practicing "nepotism" with a sister-in-law.

Imagine trying to generate news on the day Brownback announces for President....

How Al Jazeera covers American football. [link via LAist]

Shorter Richard Dawkins:

Tis a slippery slope indeed twixt MLK and OBL.

(and with all due props to Daniel Davies, Elton Beard, et al., for the "Shorter..." form.)

Any good investigative piece should have some real world impact, and Michael Hiltzik's series on the ongoing fraud that is Olympic dope-testing seems to be getting some positive results in the right places. International sports officials have begun to lobby to end the policy of strict liability, which bans athletes from competition even when testing reveals amounts too tiny to have any effect, or where the doping was purely accidental. The International Basketball Federation is particularly aggrieved at the inclusion of cannibis as a banned substance, even though it provides no known competitive advantage to athletes; it is the number one cause of positive tests in that sport (who knew?), and the notion that an athlete can get banned from his sport and stripped of any medals simply because he got baked after competing is absurd. Moreover, the reliability of the testosterone testing procedures that has besmirched the good name of Tour de France champion Floyd Landis has come under scrutiny, apparently because the scientific principles it adheres to are similar to those of creationism.

Ouch:

And although they all praised the troops before they dissed the troops, we're also starting to see some in the pro-war crowd place the blame for the coming defeat on the troops themselves. Here's NRO's Michael Ledeen slagging the soldiers last week:

Note that an increase in embeds [U.S. troops embedding in Iraqi military units] doesn’t necessarily require an increase in overall troop strength. We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that.

Could you imagine the reaction from Ledeen's pals at Pajamas Media if Markos Moulitsas (or God forbid, John Kerry) had said exactly the same thing in the exactly the same context? It would have been a pure shitstorm of indignation. Roger Simon would have written a cute little post about liberal reactionaries that incorporated a Buddy Holly song, Charles Johnson would have cited it as inconvertible proof of the worldwide conspiracy between Islam and The Left to enslave us all using the Vulcan Mindmeld, Glenn Reynolds would have sputtered something about Markos (and/or Kerry) hating America and the troops, while Michelle Malkin synthesized it all into a really stupid post of fifteen or so very small words.

In any event, per Ledeen, the war is being lost because our goldbricking soldiers are sitting around drinking latte instead of shooting Muslims. That sounds pretty bitter, too.

--Dennis the Peasant.

DTP used to brutalize me over at Roger Simon's comments, so I do feel empathy for Malkin, et al.'s for being his latest targets...but not a lot. Better them than me. [link via James Wolcott]

Sadly, the California congressional delegation seems to contain a fair share of xenophobes, particularly among the Democratic contingent. According to the LA Times, at least seven California Democrats on the Hill would oppose any move to amend the Constitution to remove the ancient anachronism barring naturalized citizens from running for the Presidency. More telling, a number of supporters say that such a change would be a "low priority," adopting the language many civil rights "supporters" used in the '40's and '50's to justify their inaction in combating Jim Crow. Speaker Pelosi also qualifies her support, demanding that any such amendment have a ludicrously long residency period of thirty-five years.

There are a thousand good reasons why Ahnold should not be elected President, but the fact that he was born in Austria almost sixty years ago isn't one of them, and efforts to point to immigrants having divided loyalties and/or dual citizenship, or references to his piggish behavior on movie sets, are irrelevant to this topic. The real issue is that the governors of Michigan and California, as well as millions of other loyal Americans, are barred from running for President, and it is no different than a Constitutional provision limiting the office to Christians, or to men. Kudos to Henry Waxman, who averred "I favor a constitutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president, even those I may not support myself."

I dream of things that never were: Could Tommy Lasorda have saved the country from the Nixon Presidency, and ended the Vietnam War five years earlier, if only he hadn't worn tight shoes on the night of June 4, 1968? Some questions are raised....

Not a good day for Andrew Sullivan. He seems to unintentionally "out" Condaleeza Rice, here, then approvingly quotes an anti-chickenhawk argument made by a racist xenophobe, here. Senator Boxer, of course, is exactly right. Whatever the merits of requiring a person to have some sort of stake in the policy they're arguing for, it must be clear to anyone who doesn't have his head up his ass that the ongoing debacle in the Middle East stems in large part from this being a war in which our governing elite and our fighting men and women come from two different classes. So much of our thinking stems from two interrelated notions: that we extrapolate onto the universe our own unique experiences, and that we feel much greater empathy to those closest to us. The full gravity and horror of war cannot be wholly appreciated by those who've never seen combat, or who've never had a loved one do so.

UPDATE: Another moronic take on the subject, here (esp. in the comments). Those conservative cheerleaders for war have never had an effective counter to why they're sitting this one out, besides the Modified Liston Alibi.

David Beckham signing to play with the locals is probably the thing needed to free Major League Soccer from its malaise. The league gets good but not great attendance and TV ratings, but has not matured to the point where it can sell to the fan the notion that American sports fans take as their birthright: that it is a top calibre league where the best players in the world congregate. Americans can accept the fact that the U.S. national team is not even close to being at the top in ice hockey, and that other countries have now surpassed us in baseball and basketball, since our domestic leagues in those sports are still the best.

But it's next to impossible to develop any sort of passionate interest in teams like D.C. United or the Galaxy as long as they remain content to dominate a very mediocre league. Fanatics of the sport in this country can easily dial into the Premier League or Serie A on the Fox Soccer Channel every weekend, while the casual fan has other, more palatable options during the season than watching the Houston Dynamo take on Chivas U.S.A. Giving Americans a reason to watch is one way the MSL can make itself more credible, and the best way to do so at this point is by signing top-flight players. Beckham, who has had so much attention paid to his demotion, at both the club and national level, that he can now be classified as one of the game's most underrated players, will do that, in much the same way Michael Jordan's return to the hapless Washington Wizards several years ago gave hoops fans an excuse to watch Eastern Conference basketball.

Oh, to be in England...The Trial of Tony Blair debuts this Monday. For the swelling legions of Phoebe Nicholls fans, it will surely be nirvana, and the early word is that it will even be worth watching the scenes she doesn't appear in. She has a line about Bush being in a coma that may surpass "Game, set and match" as the greatest line she's ever uttered. Otherwise, it's got some telling points about the responsibility (or lack thereof) that Western political leaders have for the consequences of their actions, including the fairy tale notion that we would actually allow international tribunals to judge our own actions.

The ICC, which tries Blair in the satire, got a bad rep from the Milosevic trial, which lasted for four years; needless to say, a four-year trial that ends only because the defendant died is contrary to any elemental notion of due process, and ends up being self-defeating if the goal is to illuminate the atrocities of the accused. After about six months, even the most passionate adherents of human rights and accountability are going to be more interested in what Paris Hilton or Posh Spice are wearing than who ordered what in Bosnia. But it obviously beats the travesty of the victor's justice that we just saw take place in Iraq. How we can consider ourselves civilized for applying one standard of justice to Pinochet and Milosevic, and another to Bush and Blair, who have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands, is beyond me.

This is directed at women, but it's something for a fat bald wastrel on a cruise ship to think about:

Beauty is power -- except for those who'd rather not spend the time. They call it "pandering to the male gaze." Yeah, it's that, too. Like wastrel kids whose legacy relative gets their asses into Yale, sometimes a little cleavage, a nice smile, and a fabulous hat get you a better seat on the plane. When they offer to move you to first class, what do you do, offer your seat to the ringer for Andrea Dworkin?

Just my luck, I'm seated in first class, and I get seated next to Miss Dworkin...or Jack Abramoff. If you haven't checked out her site recently, Amy Alkon is on a run comparable to Urban Meyer tonight.

Congrats on ending a 207-game losing streak, but when did Cal Tech become one word ("Caltech")? Have I been pronouncing it wrong all along?

Our Long National Nightmare, Part II: A profile of Robert T. Hartmann, the man who crafted the most famous line Gerald Ford ever spoke, in this morning's LA Times by the Burt Blyleven of the blogosphere, Matt Welch:

Hartmann, a Times reporter from 1939 to 1964 (with time out for service in the Navy during World War II), was no fan of the Nixon staffers, who he derisively referred to as "the Establishment." He blamed them for Ford's 1976 defeat and warned about their influence early in the Reagan era. Rumsfeld, he thought, was a cunning opportunist, while his sycophantic assistant Cheney, according to Hartmann's 1980 memoir, was "somewhat to the right of Ford, Rumsfeld or, for that matter, Genghis Kahn."

The feeling was mutual. Rumsfeld eventually undermined Hartmann by arguing successfully that the counselor's office — which shared a door with Ford's — should be converted into a presidential study. Cheney, dissatisfied with the speeches Hartmann was writing for the president (especially a historic April 1975 Tulane University address in which Ford declared the Vietnam War was "finished as far as America is concerned"), simply created his own separate speechwriting shop. And Nixon Chief of Staff Alexander Haig landed the most lasting blow of all by working around the counselor to discuss with then-Vice President Ford the possibility of pardoning the outgoing chief executive.

Hartmann, a former Counselor to the President, was a pallbearer at President Ford's funeral last week. Ironically, he spent a quarter of a century as a reporter at the Times, where he had been a particular favorite of the politician who was most famously a creation of the paper, Richard M. Nixon. Hartmann opposed the pardon of Nixon, and as recently as seven years ago called the act "an extremely selfish decision" by Ford, geared more towards making his life easier as President than any desire to put the past behind him.

We've just left Hilo on the Big Island, and it's five days at sea until the Island Princess hits San Pedro. So far, the highlight of the cruise has either been the 17-year old girl on the Aloha deck who was reported missing on the ship at four a.m. Wednesday morning, causing a great consternation among the crew and waking up half the ship (it turns out she was bonking a passenger in another cabin, and her dad overreacted), or the two, count 'em, two, performances by the legendary ventriloquist act, Willie Tyler & Lester," who for some reason was plugging a new CD (how exactly would that work?)

As anyone who has ever been on a long cruise can tell you, the port days are the least interesting part of the voyage, since you're never at any locale for longer than ten hours. Once there, you either have to overspend on a cruise-sponsored tour, make your own arrangements (always an iffy proposition), or hope there's something to do near the port. On this trip, the Island Princess stopped in Kauai for the day, and I managed to spend my visit to one of the world's most breathtaking islands doing nothing more than walking to a nearby mini-mall and buying a newspaper. On the other stops, I was more lucky, visiting the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, with a side trip to the USS Missouri, and today hooking up with a friend of a cousin-in-law to tour the spectacular (and undeveloped) outskirts of Hilo, a town which doesn't appear to have changed much in the last fifty years.

So now the fun part begins, with five days with nothing to do but eat, get smashed and play bingo. I'll have pictures to post next week. Be seeing you.

Two more black eyes for the blogosphere, here and here. For the record, I am not a Media Watchdog; if the most important thing in your life is whether Meet the Press has any left-of-center pundits on its panel, or whether the LA Times is biased against conservatives, you are living a very sad existence indeed. But the right wing obsession with the media isn't simply an embarrasment, it may eventually get someone killed. I know that there hasn't been a lot to cheer about as far as successes for the keepers of the starboard flame (sorry, I've been on a cruise ship for the past week), but some bloggers really have to get over the fact that they busted Dan Rather three years ago. Claims that the media has falsified evidence or invented sources are starting to be reminiscent of Queeg's Strawberries, and it's starting to taint the rest of us everytime they go off the deep end.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald says it better, firing both barrels:

And now the right-wing blogosphere stands revealed as what they are -- a pack of gossip-mongering hysterics who routinely attack any press reports that reflect poorly on their Leader or his policies, with rank innuendo, Internet gossip, base speculation, and wholesale error as their most frequent tools of the trade. They operate in packs, constantly repeating each other's innuendo and expanding on it incrementally, and they then cite to each other endlessly in one self-feeding, self-affirming orgy of links, as though that constitutes proof.

And they are wrong over and over and over -- and not just in error, but embarrassingly so, because so frequently their claims are transparently, laughably absurd, and they spew the most righteous accusations without any sort of evidence at all. The New Republic has its Stephen Glass and The New York Times has its Jayson Blair. But those are one-off incidents. The right-wing blogosphere is driven by Jayson Blairs. They are exposed as frauds and gossip-mongerers on an almost weekly basis. The only thing that can compete with the consistency of their errors is the viciousness of their accusations and their pompous self-regard as "citizen journalists."

The comparison with Glass and Blair may be a tad unfair, since those journalistic malefactors were caught deliberately falsifying stories, while I have no doubt the bloggers involved in this the AP fiasco sincerely believed they were purusuing some sort of Higher Truth. But that makes it even more frightening. As a wise man of the blogosphere once said in a completely different context, "screw 'em."

It appears I'm not alone. From Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press:

Since it can safely be assumed that millions are now in possession of copies of "Cars" and "Six Feet Under: The Complete Season," this is the perfect opportunity to trade in or up for other, less obvious DVDs or sets you really want -- or in some cases, need.

My personal want list, fulfilled this year, begins with the best limited TV series ever made, "Brideshead Revisited," adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novel and originally shown here on PBS in 1982.

All 660 minutes of the drama -- about the life-altering friendship of would-be painter Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) and Oxford classmate Lord Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Edwards), who introduces him to a world he would have never known when he takes Charles home to meet his his family and his upper crust London crowd -- have been remastered for the "25th Anniversary Edition Collector's Edition" (FOUR STARS out of four stars, Acorn Media, $59.99).

The perfect cast includes Sirs Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, and as Sebastian's sisters, Diana Quick and Phoebe Nichols (sic), for whom I developed life-long crushes.

Or maybe I am alone; it would stand to reason that if you truly have a life-long crush on the Phoenician, you'd be able to spell her last name correctly. It's not like the first "l" in her last name is silent.

Long live the splendor and glory of Ms. Nicholls against the depradations of the infidel !!! Kobe Akbar !!!

The Poor Are Still With Us: As you enjoy the Rose Bowl at home this New Year's Day, perhaps a thought can be spared for these benighted wretches, our nation's federal judges. According to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts:

In 1969, federal judges earned substantially more than the dean and the senior professors at Harvard Law School, Roberts said. Today, federal judges are paid about half of what the deans and senior law professors at top schools are paid, he said.

During the same period, the average U.S. worker's wage, adjusted for inflation, has risen about 18%. By contrast, the pay for a federal judge has declined about 24% compared with inflation, creating a gap of 42%, he said.

Federal judges, who have lifetime appointments, "do not expect to receive salaries commensurate with what they could easily earn in the private sector," Roberts acknowledged. Indeed, judges in many cities know that lawyers fresh out of law school will earn more than they do, he noted.

But judges should not have to accept salaries that "fall further and further behind the cost of living…. The time is ripe for our nation's judges to receive a substantial salary increase," he said.

--From today's Onion Los Angeles Times. For the record, federal district court judges, who serve lifetime appointments, have had to make do on a meager stipend of $165,000 a year, which is less than four times the average national income. It would be terrible if all the young principled ideologues that have been placed on the courts these last six years would have to leave for the private sector so soon.