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April 2004 Archives

April 30, 2004

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Cape May Spring Weekend, May 21-23, 2004
I'll be talking about The Verb from 4:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, 5/22, and I'll be at the authors' reception from 5:30 to 6:30 that night. I'll be all over the place the rest of the time, taking field trips and bonding with others of my tribe.

You can get more information by visiting the N.J. Audubon Society's website for the weekend. Preregistration is recommended for most events and required for others.

I'm finding myself more and more infuriated by the Bush administration.

I'll admit, I was a wee bit upset at the Supreme Court decision that put Bush into office, but I decided that it would be best to swallow my bile and give W. the benefit of the doubt.

What a hasty and foolish decision that was on my part.

I've already logged a number of infuriating statements and actions before, but in the last 48 hours or so it's been as if the Bushies have been targeting me for outrage.

First Bush testifies--no, wrong verb--says things in front of the 9/11 Commission, but he does so in a fashion more appropriate to a Skull and Bones initiation than a public investigation into a national disaster. After dragging his feet for months, he finally agrees to appear, but only under conditions that make him seem either cowardly, paranoid, or duplicitous.

The list of these requirements reads like a series of Mariah Carey's contract riders. First, the meeting is in the Oval Office, rather than the Commission's HQ, presumably so that the White House can exert more control over the proceedings. Second, he gets to meet the Commission in secret, with no recording devices, without even a stenographer. No record exists, no transcript will ever be available. Third, Bush doesn't appear without Cheney; the image of the U.S. President needing his Veep to hold his hand while he answers questions is one that fills me with a deep-seated shame for my nation. Fourth, they're not even under oath.

In short, Bush won't talk unless he has the options to a) do it on his home court, b) deny he said anything, c) let somebody else answer, and d) lie. If any of these avenues are denied him, he won't cooperate.

But that's just the start of it. Today marks 365 days since Bush, clad in flight jacket, dropped onto a carrier deck and announced "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" to the world. Ignoring terms that might come up in discussing this event ("AWOL," "arrogance," and "naked publicity stunt" are three we'll save for later discussion), let's just note that the President today argued that the banner behind him that day was accurate, because after all, A mission was accomplished--that Saddam Hussein was removed from power. I can just imagine Bill Clinton reading this comment and screaming out, "Oh, it depends on what your definition of 'mission' is, is that it, George?!" This is not only the sort of backpedaling that gives politicians a bad name, but it's yet another sign of Bush's absolute inability to admit error, even when the evidence of that error is piling up day by day.

And speaking of that evidence, let's go on to further outrage, shall we? Bush was one of many who publicly lauded former NFL player Pat Tillman, who gave up a multimillion-dollar contract to become an Army Ranger and last week was killed in an ambush in Afghanistan. (Remember Afghanistan? We're at war there, too.) Tillman's name and photograph were given attention in a number of places, including the NFL Draft, and his death was treated as a solemn reminder of the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families since we began our military response to 9/11. Personally, I feel that such a reminder is altogether appropriate.

The Pentagon and Sinclair Broadcasting (a major contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign fund) apparently disagree.

The remains of soldiers killed in Iraq have been spirited home with no public fanfare; indeed, their flag-draped coffins have been carefully hidden from public view. Because of a policy begun by Bush's father and continued under Clinton, the public was denied the opportunity to see the tangible evidence of the sacrifices made by hundreds of American men and women. One woman who photographed the coffins was fired from her civilian job. The reason given is that seeing such coffins is harmful to the soldiers' families, but when the coffins are unidentified and all draped in identical flags, it's hard to see how seeing the mass of them could possibly be worse than the knowledge that one of them contains a beloved soldier. And many of the families want the public to know of their relatives' sacrifices--what's to be done then?

But tonight's Nightline has raised an even bigger stink. During the show tonight, Ted Koppel intends to read the names of the 600-plus American killed in Iraq. Doing so is, to my mind, a public acknowledgment of what this war has cost, just as the celebration of Pat Tillman's service acknowledged that cost. But Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns eight ABC affiliates nationwide, is refusing to let its stations air the program tonight; apparently it views the reading of the names as a political statement, and since it's a big contributor to the political group responsible for the war, Sinclair doesn't want its people's actions held up to public scrutiny. And to keep its pet politicians from potential embarrassment, it's willing to deny the sacrifice that hundreds of Americans have made.

So which is it? Is publicly recognizing Pat Tillman's death a political statement that is harmful to his family? If so, why did the President contribute to this harm? If not, is it perhaps only fair that America be allowed to see the painful fact that our wars are fought by MANY soldiers who put their lives on the line?

Senator John McCain, a Republican for whom I have a good deal of respect, wrote a stinging letter to Sinclair, calling its decision not to broadcast "unpatriotic." That's just about the worst insult you can have flung at you these days. And in this case, I think it's accurate.

So those are my sources of outrage this week. To sum it all up, I'm left feeling as though Bush and his associates are untrustworthy, cowardly, lacking in judgment, and unpatriotic.

The question is not "Will John Kerry be a better president?" The question now is "How could John Kerry possibly be any worse?"

10:37 PM

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April 26, 2004

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Cape May Spring Weekend, May 21-23, 2004
I'll be talking about The Verb from 4:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, 5/22, and I'll be at the authors' reception from 5:30 to 6:30 that night. I'll be all over the place the rest of the time, taking field trips and bonding with others of my tribe.

You can get more information by visiting the N.J. Audubon Society's website for the weekend. Preregistration is apparently recommended for most events and required for others.

It is, perhaps, the nature of the human condition that leads a man to become, as he ages, fonder and fonder of surprises.

When the universe has settled into a routine, especially one measured in years, something that violates or shakes up that routine becomes especially valuable. When you've been listening to the car radio for a couple of hours on a long trip, frustrated by program directors' formulas--do we really need to hear another friggin' Bob Seger song? Did we need to hear even one 50 Cent song?--it's amazing how pleasant it is to hear something you haven't heard in a long while (R.E.M.'s "So. Central Rain") or haven't heard before at all (Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?").

I recently received several surprises.

One came on Saturday. It was running across the elephant enclosure at the North Carolina Zoo. "Enclosure" may not be the best word; it's open to the sky, for one thing, and is probably three to five acres in area, but it is surrounded by a trench to keep the visitors and the pachyderms apart. In any case, we stood looking over the elephants, who were standing near the back of the enclosure, and I held my nephew Sam up to see them--they're his favorite animals. They weren't doing much. But then, to our surprise, a large grey fox, bushy tail held high, came trotting across the ground in full view of the elephants. One of them was unable to bear this effrontery and launched himself toward the fox, trunk raised and ears flapping. The fox, noting this, naturally picked up speed. The elephant, noting this, picked up speed himself, and trumpeted beside. That got Sam's attention. The fox was gone into the trench on the other side of the enclosure within seconds, but for a few moments, we had a full view of a charging elephant, complete with sound effects. We didn't expect that.

I got another surprise when I returned home from NC on Sunday: an e-mail from an old friend, actor/comedian Peter Spruyt, who's out in Californy. Peter and I met playing Rainbow Soccer and later studied math, theater, and improvisational Muzak together (you can read the whole sordid account here in the Archives in July of 2002). It's always a treat to hear from those you've lost touch with, especially when it comes out of nowhere. A very pleasant surprise.

And this morning, to complete the hat trick, I got my favorite kind of surprise: a bird where none would be expected.

Well, that's an exaggeration for effect, actually. It was on my bird feeder, and I do expect birds on my bird feeder... the whole raison d'etre thing and all that... but I certainly had no reason to expect this particular bird to be on my feeder, and seeing it first thing in the morning made it even more surprising. I was standing in the bathroom, wearing nothing other than my shorts and my glasses, but a glance out the window toward the feeder told me I was looking at a black bird with a white underside.

Around here, those field marks usually mean that you're looking at an Eastern Kingbird, but they're insect predators who have no real use for feeders. After a second or two, however, I saw another field mark that clinched the identification: a heavy, off-white, triangular bill.

It was a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.

This is a beautiful northern bird that I've seen exactly once in my adult life: for a couple of nanoseconds, one was in view as it fluttered across a road in Johnson County, Iowa, in July of 1995. Jim Fuller and I were able to ID it through process of elimination. Other than that, there were only a few vaguely remembered sightings on Tinkerbell Road during my childhood.

But here was a male, calm, gorgeous, vivid, lighting up a damp green-grey morning like a kite in a spring sky. He sat for a while, turned sideways so we could see the beautiful rose-colored triangle on his chest, and finally flew off when I went out to refill the all-but-empty feeder. He's probably here only in passing, on his way to his breeding grounds up in New England or someplace like that. But I'm hoping he'll spend a few days with us. Surprises are a wonderful thing, but there's nothing wrong with having one repeated.

8:44 PM

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April 21, 2004

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Cape May Spring Weekend, May 21-23, 2004
I'll be talking about The Verb from 4:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, 5/22, and I'll be at the authors' reception from 5:30 to 6:30 that night. I'll be all over the place the rest of the time, taking field trips and bonding with others of my tribe.

You can get more information by visiting the N.J. Audubon Society's website for the weekend. Preregistration is apparently recommended for most events and required for others.

Blender Magazine recently listed its Fifty Worst Songs of All Time, an action which is naturally intended to provoke huffy responses by any pop-music nrrd with a record collection and a blog.

I am that nrrd.

It goes without saying that the list includes only hit songs, as there’d be little point in listing the many, many, awful unpopular songs that never escaped their well-deserved oblivion. The editor moreover claims that they deliberately avoided listing some tunes, mainly novelty songs and much of the “low-hanging” fruit of the Seventies. Obvious candidates like Morris Albert’s “Feelings” were thus left off, leaving room for argument-starters like the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes,” but it’s hard to deny that “Feelings” is far more deserving of a spot. Nonetheless, Blender did name a bunch of tunes that are, I agree, awful. I disagree with some of their choices--I happen to like both “Two Princes” and R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People,” thanks--but they named a bunch of tunes that reek outright, among them Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All,” Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration,” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” saving the uncoveted number-one spot for Starship’s corporate-rock anthem “We Built This City.”

Naturally, as a student of pop music, I’ve investigated this issue before, which is why I have a copy of Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs. Dave has no particular criteria other than badness, and he’s more than willing to include tunes from all periods of pop music. He thus lists such deserving abominations as Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train,” and Dan Hill’s positively purgatorial “Sometimes When We Touch.”

You might think that between them, Blender and Dave had left nothing original for me to complain about. Au contraire, mon frere! The pop charts still have plenty of musical dog feces yet to step in, and I’m just the guy to hand you a pooper-scooper and point you on your way. Consider these road apples--PC’s Own Official Worst Pop Hits Ever:

“I Will Always Love You”/Whitney Houston--
Whitney’s performance is so galling, so over-the-top, so shriekingly egotistical, that only the fact that this is a Dolly Parton composition saves it from from vaulting into the top spot.

“Michelle”/The Beatles--
I’ve always figured that there were some days when John was just too stoned to care what Paul was telling the band to do. This song is evidence.

“Rock Me Tonight”/Billy Squier--
Every so often, I hear the infectious riff of “Everybody Wants You” and start feeling maybe this guy wasn’t so bad. But usually it’s on Twofer Tuesday and this is the next song, so the feeling passes. Immediately.

“Every Rose Has Its Thorn”/Poison--
A song so dumb it actually deserved to be quoted in a Bill and Ted movie.

“Kiss on My List”/Hall & Oates--
I’m prepared to give these guys some credit for “She’s Gone,” but this piece of stinky Eighties cheese isn’t getting them anything but a sock in the mouth.

“Patches”/Clarence Carter--
A woeful tale of impoverishment and disaster so overwrought that Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” sounds like “Happy Together” by comparison.

“I Can’t Drive 55”/Sammy Hagar--
You can’t write a song or sing without squealing, either, Sammy--have you let that stop you?

“God Bless the USA”/Lee Greenwood--
Bombastic and ungrammatical (How can “an American” be “where at least I know I’m free”? Are you in one’s womb?), and if you criticize it, John Ashcroft comes to your house with a writ.

“The Girl Is Mine”/Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson--
I figure Paul also had some days where he was too stoned to care who he invited to the studio.

“True”/Spandau Fuckin’ Ballet
Cheesy synthoid torch songs don’t come any cheesier. Ah, ah-ah, AIEEEE!

“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”/Rod Stewart--
Rod was the father of both this stinker and the wonderful “Maggie May”? Umm… Is it possible that the latter looks more like the milkman?

“The Star-Spangled Banner”/Whitney Houston
All Janet Jackson did at the Super Bowl was flash a boob for three seconds. Whitney slaughtered our national anthem for three solid minutes, and worse, inspired legions of imitators to practice their scales during the word “free” before sporting events for the next decade. Where’s John Ashcroft when you need him?

“Working for the Weekend”/Loverboy--
Q: If you take a dumb and generic band, give them a dumb and generic song (with dumb and generic lyrics about dumb and generic partying), how can you make them worse? A: Dress them in red leather pants and put the obligatory Eighties headband on the lead singer. Q: Oh. Is that really such a good idea?

“Karma Chameleon”/Culture Club--
Boy George was once seen as a threatening figure, which is pretty astonishing when you listen to this gooey, edgeless song; listening to it is like drowning in margarine. Whipped margarine. Lite whipped margarine.

“We Built This City”/Starship--
Well, okay, sometimes the mass media gets it right.

5:40 AM

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April 17, 2004

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April 14, 2004

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Cape May Spring Weekend, May 21-23, 2004
I'll be talking about The Verb from 4:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, 5/22, and I'll be at the authors' reception from 5:30 to 6:30 that night. I'll be all over the place the rest of the time, taking field trips and bonding with others of my tribe.

You can get more information by visiting the N.J. Audubon Society's website for the weekend. Preregistration is apparently recommended for most events and required for others.

"Do we have an obligation to lead or should we shirk responsibility?"

My god. I don't know if I'm angry, aghast, appalled, or amazed.

I've just finished listening to President Bush's live press conference on WTOP. After a reasonably solid set of opening remarks, Bush opened the floor to questions, and in the process, he revealed himself to me in a whole new way.

Bush doesn't do live press conferences unless he absolutely has to; extemporaneous speaking is not what he's good at. But apparently the GOP delegation in Congress, perhaps aided by members of the administration, saw that media attention to recent events was working against him and told him it was time to step up and address them. The press, as he had to expect, asked him some rather pointed questions about these recent events: the escalating violence in Iraq, the testimony of Richard Clarke and Condi Rice before the 9/11 Commission, the continuing inability to find the WMDs that were supposedly the cause of this war, and the recent accusations that his administration didn't do enough to prevent the terrorist attacks on New York & Washington. Surely he had to know these topics would come up. Surely he had to have considered how to address them. Surely he had to realize how important it was to demonstrate his leadership abilities. Right?

Clarke's testimony hung heavily over one question from the press, that of whether Bush felt any personal responsibility for what happened on September 11th. I was expecting a no, a clear, macho, self-righteous response. I held out the possibility that I'd get a qualified yes, perhaps with Bush trying to sound Trumanesque, but probably weaseling out by saying the office of the President was responsible, but not him personally. I didn't get either. Instead, I got a dodge, a rather lengthy hemming and hawing that circled around the phrase "If we had known." There was no admission of responsibility, no Trumanizing, no admission that "We could have known," let alone "We should have known."

I was disappointed, but not surprised, by Bush's answer. It was another question that led to a surprise.

This second question, one that seemed to knock Bush back on his heels, was prefaced by an observation that this administration has a reputation for never admitting a mistake of any kind. That said, what would the President do differently if he could do it over again?

This is an idea that is central to the daily human experience: "Could I have done this...?" and "What if I hadn't done that?" are the basic questions of self-examination. They appear on the pop quizzes our consciences give us after we've studied our options and made our choices. If you can't answer them, you clearly haven't studied the options.

And--I still can't believe this--Bush hadn't studied.

He didn't state that he hadn't made mistakes--he's got more sense than that--but he couldn't think of a single thing he would have done differently. He dodged and ducked and circled, but he couldn't actually name one of his own mistakes. If he were a wittier man, or one with a keener sense of his own weaknesses, perhaps he'd have said something like, "I wouldn't have agreed to this press conference." But asked to admit a mistake, he couldn't do it. Moreover, he was asked a variation on this question several minutes later, and he still couldn't think of one. Is his life really this unexamined, or is he simply terrified to admit to even a single human weakness?

By the end of the Q&A, I had seen the leader of the free world, a man who has ordered 135,000 troops into battle and now admits they'll be there well past the June 30th handover of sovereignty, spend nearly an hour dodging questions and running from confrontation with his own flaws. He never stepped up to accept responsibility--not for 9/11, not for the WMD pretext, not for claiming "Mission Accomplished!" months ago, not even for refusing to testify before the 9/11 commission without Cheney at his side. He's entitled, I suppose, to deny his responsibility for any or all of these--but he never stepped up to deny it, either. He shirked even the responsibility of establishing whether he was responsible.

And the sad thing was that at the end, he said that he welcomes the opportunity to debate John Kerry about the use of American power. The rhetorical question he gave, the one he thinks that debate should be about, was a simple one: "Do we have an obligation to lead or should we shirk responsibility?"

Mr. Bush, that's a question you need to answer for yourself. About yourself.

I already know from tonight's events which option you've chosen.

3:17 AM

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April 10, 2004

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Cape May Spring Weekend, May 21-23, 2004
I'll be talking about The Verb from 4:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, 5/22, and I'll be at the banquet from 6:30 to 8:00 that night. I'll be all over the place the rest of the time, taking field trips and bonding with others of my tribe.

You can get more information by visiting the N.J. Audubon Society's website for the weekend. Preregistration is apparently recommended for most events and required for others.

Hey, the wife & kids are out of town--why not spend a little more time on my journal?

Anyway, the political winds are a-blowin' hard, and from the smell, I'd say they've shifted to a point somewhere over behind the hog lagoon. Most of the recent odor seems to wafting off the testimony of Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice concerning the nation's preparedness (or lack thereof) for the devastation of September 11th. My friend Paul Clark has said (and I tend to agree) that neither witness did a thing to persuade anyone to switch sides; those who think Bush is a bold and decisive leader trying to save the U.S. from the liberals aren't going to budge, and those who think Bush is an arrogant son of privilege hopelessly out of his depth aren't seeing much reason to change their minds, either.

But though this election is shaping up to be a partisan battle on the order of Gettysburg, there do exist those Americans who sit somewhere in between the two extremes. Despite my own liberal leanings, I did at one time think that, perhaps, the invasion of Iraq was justified. This would have been just after Colin Powell made his case before the United Nations. During the first Gulf War, Powell struck me as a calm, no-nonsense guy, and one who carried the lessons of Vietnam with him as a talisman; I couldn't imagine him putting U.S. soldiers in jeopardy for anything less than a worthy cause.

Well. Times change. And some things have become apparent.

Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if they existed at all, were not numerous or accessible enough to be a serious threat to the U.S. The connections between the secular dictator of Iraq and the radical Muslim al-Qaida group were tenuous at best, and the chances that Saddam was involved in supporting, planning, or executing the 9/11 attacks are slim indeed. The administration's hopes that toppling Saddam would guarantee the adulation of the Iraqi people were pipe dreams. A president who decried "nation-building" during the Clinton administration is now facing a construction job with unprecedented difficulties and global ramifications. And American soldiers and civilians are dying because these apparent things were not seen before.

These things are bad, but it is conceivable for a fair-minded individual to consider them mistakes. It might be the case that Bush & Co. were honest and diligent people who were operating from flawed intelligence and found themselves in a quagmire through no fault of their own.

(I don't believe that for a minute, mind you; this administration's arrogance and unwillingness to admit error, or even doubt, have become legend.)

But let's give them the benefit of the doubt: they were honestly doing the best they could with the flawed information they had. Let's extend the assumption of integrity.

But then I look at the New York Times:

President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday. The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford. The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.

It's not just the Times, either. Condi Rice herself testified that the title of the Presidential Daily Briefing for August 6th was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Unless that's not the most misleading title in PDB history, then I'd say there's some reason to believe the administration suspected al-Qaida might be up to something.

And that makes me angry.

It's one thing to make a mistake, to turn your attention to one potential threat (Russian missiles, say) and thereby miss a more dangerous threat like al-Qaida. But it is quite another to claim that you did not know about the threat of al-Qaida when you obviously did. This isn't a mistake--it's a lie.

So--is the Bush administration incompetent to assess risk and analyze data? If so, we can't trust them to keep our nation and our soldiers safe. If not, they're lying to us--and we can't trust them to do anything.

2:58 PM

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April 8, 2004

Feelin' listy today:

Top Five Unfinished Comic Book Narratives
1) Big Numbers (Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz)
2) Empire Lanes (Peter Gross)
3) Thriller (Robert Loren Fleming & Trevor Von Eeden)
4) The Ballad of Halo Jones (Alan Moore & Ian Gibson)
5) The Liberty Project (Kurt Busiek & James W. Fry)

Top Five Lowercase Musical Acts:
1) k.d. lang
2) drivin' n' cryin'
3) the cranberries
3) 'til Tuesday
5) blink-182

Top Five Non-Python but Python-Related Movies
1) Brazil (Gilliam & Palin)
2) A Fish Called Wanda (Cleese & Palin)
3) Time Bandits (Gilliam, Cleese & Palin)
4) A Private Function (Palin)
5) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Gilliam & Idle)

Top Five Places to Get an Omelet
1) Breadmen's, Chapel Hill, NC
2) Pepe's, Key West, FL
3) Not the Same Old Grind, Orange, VA
4) Waffle O'Cheeseman's house, Hillsborough, NC
5) Waffle House, everywhere

Five Best Picture Oscar Winners That Aren't All That Good
1) Gladiator
2) Forrest Gump
3) The French Connection
4) Rain Man
5) Terms of Endearment

Five Worst Names for NBA Teams
1) Utah Jazz (collective AND absurd to the point of oxymoronism)
2) Orlando Magic (collective and Disnified)
3) Miami Heat (collective and dull)
4) Golden State Warriors (nickname's fine, but "Golden State"?)
5) Los Angeles Lakers (historic, yes, but still absurd)

Five Best Names for NBA Teams
1) Minnesota Timberwolves (cool, appropriate, easily abbreviated)
2) Chicago Bulls (cool and well-paired with the Bears)
3) Detroit Pistons (appropriate and original)
4) Phoenix Suns (appropriate, and also the same upside-down)
5) Philadelphia 76ers (unique, appropriate, and a great way to shorten things down)

8:07 PM

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