SYMPATHY FOR THE DUMBASS. The Santorum schmegegge proceeds apace. NRO's Kurtz (again) and Enrich see it as an unnecessary distraction, as who could doubt their tolerance of sodomites? Andrew Sullivan, that's who. And maybe it's because, even though Kurtz says he's against sodomy laws, he must, it seems, add a demurrer to this admission, as here: "I feel I have some understanding of the basis of arguments in favor of sodomy laws. I believe that those arguments contain some sound sociological points, but I do not share their religious presuppositions."

I can understand Sullivan's frustration. He's been good to all these guys, lashing out ferociously against the traitorous Left, but when the GOP has a bigot eruption against gays (indeed, against anyone practicing something more than what George Carlin once referred to as "the old man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick"), his erstwhile compatriots can only give his own basic humanity a most lukewarm endorsement.

They don't know that the reflexive backing-off gestures they always make when they approach this topic are not just political issues to Sullivan. They're personal. It's as if he thought they were friends, and suddenly some guy started beating the shit out of him and they just stood there saying, "Well, I understand the basis of this beating... it contains some sound sociological points."

Who wouldn't be stung by that? I mean, I can't even acknowledge that Sullivan is human most of the time, and I feel for him.

THE LAST REFUGE OF A NATIONAL REVIEW COLUMNIST. John Derbyshire made a few remarks sympathetic to Darwinism and received the (given his venue) expected angry letters. In trying to explain the scientific method to his hillbilly correspondents, he finally resorts to the wooden spoon, comparing them to analysands and Commies:

I think, in fact, that Creationism is part of the larger phenomenon of "science envy" that has gripped all sorts of branches of human knowledge this past couple of centuries. Science has been so stupendously successful at transforming the physical world, everyone wants to claim scientific status for his pet theory. Marxism and Freudianism, the most prominent pseudosciences of the 20th century, both claimed to be scientific. Likewise literary "deconstructionism," etc. etc. It's all science envy. That's the leaky boat the Creationists have got themselves into.

This is the idiot grandchild of the old liberal saw, "If we do this, we become just like our enemies." (Or, as Harlan Ellison put it, "Lie down with pigs, get up smelling like garbage.") Now, this can be powerful stuff if you're telling sensitive, enlightened folks that killing in response to killing is wrong. But what will Cletus at the keyboard think of Derbyshire lumping him in with the Freudians? Pitchfork Pat, come back!

LIAR'S POKER. I don't think Martin Sheen gets enough credit for his performance on The West Wing. Last night they showed him doing some high-stakes negotiating with the Russian President on the Hot Line. (Boy, that sentence makes me nostalgic.) When the first call, in which the President pretended a unmanned spy plane downed in Russia was only photographing "coastal erosion," fell apart, Sheen looked at the phone and said, "this isn't working," exactly as if he were regarding a defective toaster.

I thought about it today when I read this:

According to US State Department officials, the “blatant and bold” announcement that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, made to James Kelly, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs, was followed by the threat to test one.

One State Department official said that Mr Li, attending talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, turned to Mr Kelly after making the claim and said: “Now, what are you going to do about it?”

I can see why folks who like him admire Bush's apparent nonchalance. You want to think confrontations like this are supervised by people who don't sweat much. Now that the people we're playing around with are not penny-ante WMD wannabes (or never-weres), but nuclear-equipped hardline Commies, let us hope he and his know more than how to play poker -- let's hope they also know what they're doing.

NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY. Well, I see the Dixie Chicks are trying to stretch their winning streak. I can't say as I blame them. Making music is a hard dollar, so if a controversial remark by your lead singer causes an informal boycott of your band that mysteriously fails to make much of a dent in your CD sales, you probably should see it as an opportunity.

Their decision to strip as a means of making their point is probably going to be more effective than anything they can come up with verbally, if their quoted "Prime Time" remarks are any indication. (Would they have gotten so big if they looked like Alabama?) Still, the words will do their work -- alternately belligerent and contrite, they cover all their bases (like the words stencilled on their torsos).

Political commentators like to talk about it, but it was never about the politics. The only thing I can't figure is what Maines was thinking when she made that comment. I'd like to believe that she knew this all would come of it -- that it was a bald crossover move, like I think Evancescence's "controversy" was. Would that be paranoid of me? Or just giving them too much credit?

SPINNING SANTORUM. Stanley Kurtz’ piece on the Senator Santorum affair (weird comments about gays and incest) is very long and does not mention Andrew Sullivan. This is odd for a few reasons. First, it’s odd because Sullivan, for all his hideous faults, is the best-known conservative crusader against anti-gay discrimination (and the attendant sodomy-law concerns) within the conservative movement. It’s like talking about the Democratic Party in the 1990s without mentioning Clinton – a bald omission that makes sense only if by so doing you’re trying to make a point. Or conceal one.

The latter seems to be the case here, because Sullivan has blogged tirelessly on the subject of Santorum of late (perhaps in hopes of instigating a Trent-Lott-style, zone-flooding repudiation of him among the Right). You'd never know this by Kurtz’ NRO article, which is largely about how unfair the NYT’s coverage was, and, by extension (we might say hyperextension), how liberal journalism ruins everything it touches (“But so long as the mainstream media keeps producing the sort of partisan and ignorant nonsense it has deployed in its effort to destroy Sen. Santorum…”).

Kurtz better go tell Glenn Reynolds that he’s doing Howell Raines dirty work.

Trying to spin the statist, pro-sexual-repression gibberish of a Republican Senator into an attack on liberals is a noble bit of chutzpah, but Kurtz is going to have to do better than this.

CAUGHT MY EYE. In the Guardian today: "Tony Blair threw down to the gauntlet to Sinn Fein today with a list of three demands the republican movement must meet if next month's elections are to go ahead... Mr Blair also spelled out a new doctrine for negotiations, stating that from now on 'clarity is our friend. Ambiguity is our enemy.'"

I suppose this is Blair pulling a W -- black and white, with us or against us, etc. There's a key difference between Ireland and Iraq, though -- Ireland has already been invaded, occupied, and pissed off enough to mount armed rebellions.

Of course it's not impossible that the Iraqis will get there sooner than later.

ALT.JESUS UPDATE: METALLIC N.O. 'member how I said Creed wasn't too convincing as a Godband? Apparently the lead singer is being sued for having turned up on a Chicago stage under the influence of too much Caanan-feast juice:

The disgruntled concertgoers allege in court papers that the band's lead singer Scott Stapp was so 'intoxicated and/or medicated that he was unable to sing the lyrics of a single Creed song.

'Instead ... Stapp left the stage on several occasions during songs for long periods of time, rolled around on the floor of the stage in apparent pain or distress and appeared to pass out while on stage during the performance.'

The rocker's condition was clearly a result of an earlier drink or drugs binge...

I think Scott Stapp has several escape routes available. He could:

• Claim his state was due to a surfeit of anti-anxiety medication, taken in anticipation of an adverse ruling in the upcoming Bowers vs. Hardwick challenge and the resulting pain to Baby Jesus;
  
  
• Insist he was bamboozled by yobbos posing as Christians who had convinced him that Foster's Lager was the blood of Christ;
  
  
• Throw himself Swaggart-style upon the mercy of his fans, crying "I have sinned against you!"
  

The obvious question is: would anyone be suing Creed if it were not a Christian band? I'm not suggesting anti-Christian prejudice -- just Creed's obvious vulnerability to such a challenge because they're supposed to be tight with the Messiah.

Or maybe I'm wrong -- I was about to ask, "Who would sue the Stones or the White Stripes on similar grounds?" but, of course, in these times that just might happen. Not because we're a litigious society (although of course we are), but because we're increasingly a pussified one -- neither a band's penchant for, or history of, drug abuse, nor the once substance-friendly nature of rock 'n' roll itself, would prevent some moron from insisting that his rights as a consumer were violated because his bellowing egoist of choice did not come up to snuff due to Bacchic overindulgence.

Because in the commodified era in which we live, even the ancient exemption for rockin' wildmen is denied -- punters arrive expecting product, not anything so spontaneous as a Metallic K.O. Speaking of Iggy, think of the lawsuits he might have endured, were his youthful exploits fast-forwarded to the present day, on the grounds that he got peanut butter on some poseur's velour jacket.

Butt-fuckers trying to run my world indeed.

SERENDIPITY. I'm loving this: see what happens when you transpose a couple of letters in my address: alicublog.blogpsot.com.

What amazes me is, this guy thinks my fumble-fingered runoff is worth redirecting to his site.

UPDATE: Aw, shoot -- it happens with any other blogspot site. Mother was right -- I'm not special!

ANOTHER MORNING, ANOTHER OUTRAGE. Now the malefactor is John Derbyshire, whose theme, insofar as one can be detected, is that liberals are snobs, and thereby spiritually inferior to those charming folks who believe that God didn't make man from no monkey. It is a hilarious argument as, for one thing, Derbyshire's writing (here and elsewhere) is pretty much one long sneer, -- he's ill-suited to attack others for holding themselves superior to their fellow mortals. Also, here's the anecdote with which he defends his tree-hugger bad, knuckle-dragger good dichotomy:

Last year one of my neighbors, an elderly widow who was very kind and helpful to us when we first moved into this street, fell and broke her femur... The nursing home was a lovely place, spotlessly clean and well-run, smelling of floor-polish, fresh-cut flowers, and disinfectant. The staff were cheerful, attentive and brisk. I could not help but contrast it with the place in which my own mother spent some of her last days -- a privately-owned but municipally-supported place in England, staffed by ill-tempered slatternly girls and stinking of boiled cabbage and stale urine. Being taken to our neighbor's room, I noticed here and there discreet, plain little crucifixes on the walls. It was a Christian establishment, run by some evangelical group. Probably none of the staff believes in the theory of evolution.

This touching scene reminds me of the anti-Communist filmstrips we were shown in Catholic grammar school, in which the apparatchiks were always shown with fulsome sneers and (the clincher) smoking cigarettes. If they could have found any way to portray the female Commies as "slatternly girls" without bringing the near occasion of sin to us tender kinder, I'm sure they would have done so.

A lot of the reasoning at NRO these days is at about this level. That's one of the interesting things about the current war-gloat the Right's on. The much-vaunted Iraqi WMD seems, so far, to either be non-existent or available in such feeble conditions and quantities as to make any complaint of their imminent threat comical. The liberation of the poor Iraqis -- which became, in the later phases of the war, the new, cuddlier justification for the conflict-- is, as the ashes cool, beginning to manifest its absurdity: Iraq as a Republican-run human rights inititative that cost about a hundred billion dollars, and killed dozens of Americans and untold Iraqis. (Maybe that's what it takes to get Republicans behind a human-rights initiative: the promise of conquest, and contracts for their friends.) Their argument for the Iraq invasion increasingly boils down to "we won, so shut up." Considering how successful this logic has been, they can almost be forgiven for applying it to everything else. It's certainly easier than thinking.

YOUR MORNING IDIOTS. If it bothers you that Iraqi antiquities were looted, Clifford D. May says at NRO, you hate America. And WSJ Ignoramus Emeritus Robert Bartley don't like that there evolution business none too good ("The Scopes Monkey trial of 1925, the great defeat of the fundamentalists, has in particular come in for reassessment"). Which makes sense, because he's a living refutation of it.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS. In the space of a news cycle, a Pennsylvania girl was kidnapped and her parents killed, and the murderer/abductor apprehended. An Amber Alert had been speedily posted, though it doesn't seem to have figured in the arrest. But it has figured in others, including this recent Texas case.

The Amber Alert is a great thing. Throughout the Internet age we've heard talk of using technology to increase community involvement for the common good. This has mostly gone unrealized, but the Alerts really work, and I'm glad we have them.

I hope we can all spare a thought, though, for the Crime Bill just passed by the Senate that would Federalize the Alert system -- because, not willing to let well enough alone, our legislators have included in it over a hundred pages of additional legislation, including some drug and Internet provisions that have nothing to do with rescuing children, and which would invite judicial challenge sooner than later.

Under the proposed law, reports the Modesto Bee, "Property owners, for instance, can be criminally charged if they 'open, lease, rent, use or maintain any place, either temporarily or permanently,' that's employed in drug use." This provision, following an ugly trend, makes people responsible for events over which they may have no control -- which, apart from being patently unjust, also basically turns landlords into cops -- cops presumed to have powers of precognition, at that -- and that's a recipe for discriminatory renting practices, not to mention a further injection of paranoia into a society that's already dizzy with mistrust.

It would be nice if the Bill were stripped of all this crap and devoted entirely to making an already useful system better.

UPDATE: It should be mentioned that, from what I can find, the achievements of Amber Alerts so far are modest -- the best cases I can find (like the one aforementioned) are sketchy, and it's not always clear that the rescues are due to the system. This Oregon report, for example, is called "Boy Safe After Amber Alert Issued," but it may be that the boy in question was located by a scanner report, not the Amber Alert. I still think it's at least a promising idea, but this is all the more reason why we should be conscientious about its development, and certainly shouldn't be using it as an excuse to put all kinds of vaguely-related nonsense onto the lawbooks.

A PASCHAL MYSTERY THAT BEST REMAINS UNSOLVED. As if Easter weren't depressing enough, I have just seen a promo for Fox's "Mr. Personality." I have it on good authority that the masks the men wear do not conceal wens, port-wine scars, or other entertaining disfigurements. And, as this is a network show, the Story of O intimations will certainly go unfulfilled.

I also hear that there will be a "Ms. Personality" as soon as Fox decides from among these premises:

• Boys Don't Cry-style breast restraints replace masks;
  
• All involved parties wear masks, which completely cover their mouths and eyes, making the host's commentary (and the ballroom dancing and hot tub scenes) vastly more interesting;
  
• Masks have beaks stuffed with aromatic herbs to prevent SARS infection;
  
• Masks are entirely dispensed with and half-wits of both sexes merely flirt, gibber, and get it on.
  

WHO SAYS THERE ARE NO ROLES FOR WOMEN? Coming soon: Oscar-winner Halle Berry in X2: X-Men United.

I wonder if Louise Fletcher has a bit role.

A MIGHTY WIND. Saw the new Christopher Guest movie last night. It delivered the expected laughs, thank God, as at this stage the price of a movie ticket is a serious investment for me, and if my breathing and/or thinking muscles don't get a good workout I consider myself royally rooked. The movie's goals are modest in the big-picture sense, and all the attention is lavished on versimilitude and comic engineering. The album jackets, archival footage, tunes, and physical and emotional characterizations (from Christopher Guest's quavering Peter Yarrow schtick to the annoyingly hearty New Main Street Singers) are even better-observed than in This is Spinal Tap.

It wasn't as hilarious to me as Spinal Tap for a couple of reasons .Foremost, rock and roll is just funnier than folk -- more bombastic, and more overtly enabling of lunatics at every level. Now there are some freaked-out folkies in the world, true, but you just don't get the kind of dirt on Pete Seeger and Mary Travers you get on their rock equivalents. And folk music just doesn't have Stonehenge (or cucumbers down the pants).

Also, Guest gambled a bit on his Mitch and Mickey characters. When Eugene Levy came out in his zombie mode, I thought we were in for many cheap burn-out jokes (and there were some, and they were all great). But Mitch and Mickey have kind of a sweet, sad story, and its payoff was really touching (though the coda was properly cynical). Roger Ebert thinks Guest went soft on his characters here and that vitiated the humor. Well, maybe -- Albert Brooks' earlier movies have more yuks than his later, gentler ones (like The Muse and Defending Your Life), and the corrosive Real Life is still my favorite. But in a world full of harshness I can't fault anyone for giving us a little more of the human dimension.

I also have to confess that I have a soft spot for 60s folk music of the cleaned-up and canned variety parodied here. My mother had a live Limelighters album, and a few years ago I got my own copy of it. To hear these well-scrubbed boys wailing their arch rendition of "There's a Meetin' Here Tonight," and imagining a bunch of equally well-scrubbed college students getting their groove on to it in some candle-in-the-Chinati-bottle joint, for some reason gives me great pleasure. It's just so square, but energetic at the same time -- full of hope and promise, and maybe embarrassing precisely for that reason. Rock gives you an out by being cynical. With folk at its worst-best (excluding, that is, the Loudon Wainwrights and John Prines, who have their own, different charm, and of course the antifolkies), you have some guy beating strings on a wooden box and trying to get the crowd to howl along about peace and freedom or some immigrant past he read about in a sociology class. It's silly, but it's also sweet -- not "sweet" in the IBM-ad way (I just made a million off some idiot followers of a shitty band! Sweet!), but in its traditional sense.

So Guest cut 'em some slack. And so do I.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A MISSPENT YOUTH. A honey, found on Yglesias -- a 14-year-old conservative author published by World Net Daily Books.

There are precedents for this. Richard Brookhiser was 16, I believe, when he started writing for National Review. (I recall an article he did for them on the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium demo in 1970.)

Brookhiser today is indistinguishable from any other right-wing gasbag. Talented as he is, he could have done anything with his life, yet he spends it writing crap like this.

Brookhiser, from the looks of him, is upper-echelon rightwing and well compensated for his work. Still, the sense of waste is palpable. If he had to write, he could have done short stories, screenplays, punk rock lyrics, etc. After some raps in the mouth, turn-off notices, and reviews of various dispositions, he would have been forced into the decision we all must make -- whether or not writing's worth it even without the money -- and thereafter pursued a destiny of his own making. Whether it be foolhardy or praiseworthy, every man should chart his own course.

But Uncle Bill Buckley and a whole host of enablers clapped for little Richard and set him up a child laborer. Today the former Golden Boy is a functionary, a lifer, an assistant minister of culture for the Forces of Darkness. How his parents must weep. And now little Kyle Williams will be railroaded into a similar fate.

I don't know what's worse -- encouraging a kid to become a writer, or encouraging him to become a political blowhard. Neither is an enviable destiny under the best of circumstances, but to have the die cast for you before the age of consent is downright tragic.

Come to thing of it, Yglesias looks a little young for this sort of work himself.

RIGHT LESSON, WRONG COUNTRY. "We must not let future generations down by bequeathing them a legacy of a society that is divided, a national debt that will break their backs, an educational system that churns out parrots and a society that wallows in self-pity and snivels in mortification at the first sign of a problem."

When I saw it on Instapundit my heart leapt. Then I saw that the guy was talking about Iraq.

Divided society, back-breaking debt, lousy public education, and self-pity that won't quit -- ain't that America?

HOMAGE TO CNN.

SUCH IDIOCY MUST BE COMMEMORATED. "No French goods should be bought here. None. I suggest they have some music at their meeting to set the mood. They should buy a copy of the 'Have You Forgotten?' CD and play it over and over until they understand." -- Jed Babbin, NRO.

"Have You Forgotten?" (for those living in fortunate ignorance of such crap) is a country song telling us that September 11 was the reason for the attack on Saddam Hussein, whose connection with September 11 is as far from proven as Jed Babbin is from common sense.

MIDDAY MIDTOWN. Something I'd never seen before: two Japanese businessmen bowing to each other outside Sushiden. It went on for several seconds, until the elder of the two gave a final head-shake, like a Shriner adjusting the tassel on his fez, spun around and took off.

WITCH-BURNING 101. "What the New York Times and Washington Post may really be afraid of, though, is something Mr. Paige isn't even pushing. That all of this may clear the way for local school boards to allow curriculum to include serious and honest debate about the role religion has played in society." -- Brendan Miniter, Wall Street Journal

I'm not afraid of that at all. Hell, I would like to teach such a class.

Along with Galileo and the Inquisition, we can treat the burning of Tyndale (and Cranmer, Rogers, et alia), such papal insanities as the Trail of Pope Formosus' corpse, the banning of books, the persecution of sects, and all manner of interference with the lives of free men by churches and churchmen, from blue laws to Bowers vs. Hardwick.

I don't think that's what Miniter had in mind. But if he's serious about the subject (just saying, of course), he must know that such negative examples would inevitably come up (unless they are suppressed from the newly-freed religious discussion, and, boy, the levels of irony there would do homage to a HoJo's parfait).

Let's plan ahead for this, since, like most of what our idiot prince's minions propose these days, it will probably come to pass. How should our proposed socio-religious teachers respond to ACLU-style flak during their "Jesus and Our Government" lessons? Here's a suggested response:

"Mistakes were made. Despite their long history of savage persecutions, most religions are now relatively benign units that dispense soup to the needy and pablum to their congregations -- except in some Muslim countries that we're going to take over soon anyway. Look, kids, give me a break -- you know I have to teach this shit. You don't have to pay any more attention to me than you do to the English teachers. All you have to do is pass the Federal test, and you've all got crammers for that. So don't ask so many questions. After all, it's not anything important -- it's just school."

PROGRAM NOTES. I love my employers, really, I do. But I have to get something off my chest. (Long look to the right, long look to the left.) I hate, hate, hate Lotus Notes.

You need a post-doctoral degree to fucking archive. If you have more than five notes in your inbox, all kinds of wack shit takes place.

F'rinstance, say I get a "new mail" alert, but I happen to be mucking around in my Sent mailbox. When I switch over to the Inbox, the new mail is not there. Eventually -- some 10 to 30 minutes later -- the mail will appear. But this bizarre arrangement cuts much of the immediacy out of email, which is a large part of the point of email, isn't it?

Maybe it works differently on Macs. Wait a minute -- I worked with Notes on a Mac in another job. It only sucked slightly less.

But, then, anything does. Bedcause I hate, hate, hate Windows.

GREATER NEW YORK. The local Fox affiliate -- that's New York, to those coming late to this epic poem I call a weblog -- showed results of an online poll that asked viewers to name their greatest concern with Mayor Bloomburg's budget decisions. 29 percent of respondents named the proposed commuter tax.

This is something that occurs to me now and then: New York City stations actually broadcast well beyond our city limits, into what's called the Tri-State Area. So it's not so weird that many Fox viewers would take a suburban view of our crisis (Just don't charge me for anything!). Nor is it weird that so many segments on the local news shows will be about something going on in other jurisdictions, nor that the weather, traffic updates, and calendar events shift focus from the City That Never Sleeps to the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets That Never Wake Up.

But the poll made clear to me something I usually only dimly acknowledge: that a lot of people outside the City have a stake in New York. We employ thousands of out-of-towners, and entertain and play host to thousands more. Whatever the civic integrity of the many smaller units that surround us, they all have an eye turned toward us. Will it be tough getting through the tunnel tomorrow morning? Will some parade or state visit impede traffic? How long's the Orchid Show running?

And this extends even to an offhand kind of empathy. Our news is to a large extent their news. They probably are more aware of the bouncer that was killed in the East Village last weekend than they would be of a bouncer killed in the next Township. We all cluck our tongues or feel badly about the trials and travails of nationally-broadcast news subjects, but once Elizabeth Smart is off the tube, Laci Peterson is on it, and here comes Michael Skakel for a repeat performance. That camera jumps from locale to locale. But New York is a fixed stage which three states, at least, take in on a daily basis.

That ought to make me feel closer to at least this nearby bloc of non-New Yorkers. But it just makes me feel further from them. We're the ones drowning in debt and intermittently occupied by rifle-toting troopers. They're living in green acres and watching us go broke from well-appointed rec rooms. And whenever we ask for a hand, we usually get the back of it. Sheldon Silver is trying to squeeze a couple billion out of the state assembly for the City, and the Governor's office calls it "outrageous." Peekskill Pataki knows where his bread is buttered.

After Giulianification and everything else, we remain the place where they'd never want to live but would certainly visit to take in dinner and a show -- just so long as the streets are clean and well-patrolled, and no one asks them to take a personal interest in how they might remain so.

ALT.JESUS. I see Evanescence has made its big crossover move. Let's see where they take it from here. However, I have to say that it's getting harder to pick the rockin' Christers out of a lineup. It was months before I knew Creed, Evanescence's erstwhile labelmate, was singing to me about Jesus. (I only knew that I'd had enough of that particular vocal affectation about two verses in, and Nickelback hadn't even broken yet.) I ain't seeing too much overt prosletyzing at Creed's website, either. Of course, I don't watch many videos, and I notice they have at least one with stigmata, so maybe their message is just pitched sufficiently on the downlow to make it a cool-factor -- you know, like drugs used to be.

The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed -- they've all name-checked the Messiah. Maybe one of them should negotiate for Evanescence's old slot.

MISTAH KURTZ, HE NUTS. All you really need is the title of the new Stanley Kurtz joint: "Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint." You can slog through the whole thing if you like, and learn how John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown changed the course of British policy in India (Sigh -- remember when "the personal is the political" was the left's screwy idea?), but I warn you, it's basically about how to pacify the wogs -- er, ragheads -- er, whomever. (Sample quote: "The trick is to encourage electoral experiments on the local level while still keeping hold of national power." I'd say "trick" is the very word.)

You know, wingers froth over Noam Chomsky, but the Professor's "client state" paradigm is holding up pretty good at the moment.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. The weather is gorgeous. People midtown seem to be running less on nervous energy than on bright-eyedness and bushy-tailedness. Jackets are draped over single shoulders, sunglasses are proudly perched on upturned nose-bridges. And the goat-footed balloon man whistles far and wee.

MORE TRICKS OF THE TRADE. A fascinating story in the NY Sun (to which rag I won't link because they require subscription, and because they suck -- though I will link to a hilarious site that daily calls the bastards out) about a movement among Congressional mouth-breathers to mandate "ideological diversity" at universities -- here's a taste of the plan:

The Senate Republican aide said no official method of measuring "ideological diversity" has been set, as the legislation has not been drafted yet. But the aide said such factors as religion and party registration could be used.

It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a law banning ideological discrimination; the District of Columbia, for example, bars discrimination based on party affiliation as well as race, gender and sexual orientation.

Notice the author's quick dash from the harsh facts of the first graf -- in which he glibly informs us that soon professors may be hired and fired on the overt basis of personal beliefs -- to the assurance that such a law would be no different from a D.C. anti-discrimination ordinance (notwithstanding, though, that the D.C. law prevents exclusion, whereas the proposed fiat would seem to demand it). But you wouldn't have to notice it to know that something's up.

One partial tipoff is the headline, "Universities Resist Efforts To Require Ideological Diversity On Campuses," which has the classically awkward backward construction (for isn't the proposed law itself, draconian yet little-covered, the more newsworthy subject?) of a soft-soap job.

Another is the mention of anti-Semitism, prominent in the lead graf and sprinkled elsewhere. As portrayed, the law would not specifically protect Jews, and creating quotas based on "religion and party registration" to get at anti-Semites is akin to blowing up a mountain to shake some oranges from a nearby tree. Real anti-Semitism is a serious thing (oy -- what a pain in the ass is this blogospheric due-diligence!), but we can safely assume that in the case of this "reporter" -- one Timothy Starks -- brandishment of anti-Semitism is merely the refuge (though probably not the last) of a scoundrel.

See how it works?

"MEME" IS A PRETTIER WORD THAN "LIE". This guy, a Murdoch scrivener approved by a couple of blog-machers, drops an article gloating over about a dozen Aussie leftists who have been proved wrong in their Iraq casualty estimates.

So far so what, as most sane people on either side of the fence never doubted our caissons would roll over the Iraqi military. (The more interesting argument remains: how good is this sort of 'diplomacy by other means' in the long run for the U.S.?)

But it's all in the padding: the columnist in question lards his jest with statements like these:

So where are you today, you whom Saddam reckoned among his friends?
Where are you who waved anti-war banners that pouted: "Not In Our Name"?...

But when we say the Left got this war wrong, we must be clear that this was no innocent error of judgment. Too many wilfully let a self-indulgent loathing of capitalism, or the US or John Howard blind them to the real truths and the real evil.
NOR can we let the myth grow that the Left always knew the war would be won easily, and was worried more by the peace...

...they dreamed of a war in which millions died, and Iraqis greeted our soldiers not with kisses but bullets. Overseas, too, anti-war propagandists luridly dreamed of American honour drowning in Iraqi blood... How lovingly they linger on news of looting...

Aside from a couple of home-grown De Genovas among them, these guys appear just to have been wrong (albeit spectacularly so) about the conditions of the road to victory. To say that they are pro-Saddam, or dreaming of blood, on the basis of this evidence is rather a bridge too far.

But his fustian and frothing is not meant for them, but for the rest of us -- that is, anyone else who thinks our new Middle Eastern adventurism might not be the best use of our lives and lucre, however much was spent (or has been, so far). If you went to an anti-war rally, you're pals with Saddam. If you note with alarm the chaos in Baghdad, it is only because your dream of blood was interrupted by victory. And when the bill for this famous victory is presented, should you wonder aloud at the great cost and the small return, it will doubtless be motivated by your hatred of America and lust for carnage.

Saddam's two-minute hate is up -- yours is just beginning.

I TOLD YOU HE HAD STYLE. I really ought to read Bahrain's Gulf Daily News more often. They had a lovely story today called "Ex-banker 'helped Saddam hide cash in Satan's account'."

Some highlights:

A retired banker living in Switzerland spent 10 years helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hide millions of dollars via a bank account under the name of Satan, Britain's Sunday Times reported...

One of Saddam's relatives, Saad Al Mahdi, who controlled the "Satan" account with the Banca del Gottardo in the Bahamas, was beheaded by the Iraqi leader, possibly because he was skimming cash from the account, the report said, labelling him "something of a playboy"...

According to the paper, the former banker cannot remember details of his work for Saddam, whom he described as "a blood-thirsty, crazy man", having met him on several occasions.

That "having met him on several occasions" is the work of a true prose stylist. As for Saddam, he'll leave behind more anecdotes than Jerry Lee Lewis and Phil Spector put together.

PERMALINKS WORK, I THINK. Apparently I have to update the archive every time I post though. Drag.

FOUND TREASURES. I went looking for info about the new Christopher Guest film, "A Mighty Wind," and got an entirely different "A Mighty Wind." I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer to see their film. Solar energy, "Meteor judgement coming to Earth," and Messianic Judaism -- this could be the next "Left Behind."

JUNK FEAST. I'm mildly briefly happy. And why? Because fortune has placed Let's Do It Again on my telescreen. Yes, the even-lamer reprise to Uptown Saturday Night with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier (who also lamely directed) and an all-black-star cast including Ossie Davis in a fez, J. J. "Dy-no-mite" Walker as a middleweight (!) boxer, John Amos as a kingpin, Calvin Lockhart (!!) as Biggie Smalls (see where they got it, kids?) and Denise Nicholas looking as be-a-utiful as she did on "Room 222" (and if she looks any different now I don't want to know about it). Goofy gags (some including hypnosis!), Poitier and Cosby in pimpwear (though Cosby is also fetching in his courderoy pork-pie hat), lots of ostentatious black supernumeraries (shouts to Louis Farrakhan!), and a reeeeal nice Curtis Mayfield soundtrack. It's a low-budget blessing, especially with Budweiser (though I expect Mickey's would do at least as well). Kudos to the African History Network for the viewing.

(On the "Room 222" tip, did you know Lloyd Haynes died of cancer in 1986? Pause in memoriam. The dude was a dude. I saw another 222er, Karen Valentine, in "Breaking Legs" off-Broadway some years back. She was fine, of course. (Larry Storch was in the same production!) And we all know about Michael Constantine's fat role in the fat Greek wedding. Ah, early 70s TV. Bliss it was to be alive.)

MY BUDDY. "The emerging US administration in Baghdad intends to use screened members of Saddam Hussein's municipal police force to keep order in the capital...another civil affairs officer, Major David Cooper, said: 'An awful lot of these people were police officers first and Ba'athists second. If we can identify those who were not hardline Ba'athists but are hardline Iraqi policemen, we can use them to maintain order.'" --Guardian.

Sergeant, this is Officer Mohammed. You'll be partnering with him on foot patrol

American pig, there is looter! Let us go cut out his tongue!

Ease up, Officer. He's only got a bag of groceries and a microwave.

I did not see the microwave. Is grand theft! I cut off his testicles as well!

(cue music and credits: Marcus and Mohammed -- teleplay by Bud Yorkin)

American pig, I have here prisoner. Come, let us interrogate him!

Officer, this man is dead!

What? Is impossible! I applied the electrodes for only one hour! He must have heart condition.

Ooooooh, you'll be the death of me, Officer Mohammed!

I see this one as more of a Desmond Wilson vehicle.

SHIT IN A CORNER II. Wow, they're still nuts over at the NRO blog. Fave line: "My new media analysis column suggests that many people labelled 'peace activists' would be properly labelled 'war activists.'" Fight the power, brother. And Lord bless us, Ned Flanders is back. Isn't Dallas a big enough market, or hasn't his local prayer group made him comfortable yet?

But the best is this record review:

Want to celebrate the liberation of Iraq? Like patriotic music? Interested in new independent artists? Then check out the superb new album by Eric Free... Free sings, "There's no God in old Bin Laden, Just the Devil grinnin' there...Bin Laden, America is comin' after you! You got no place to run or hide, Your killin' days are through!...Them crazy Taliban hate women, Treat 'em all like slaves. They bag 'em up from head to toe, Can't even show their face." Kim Il-Jong gets a bluegrass treatment... The title track "Saddam Insane" proclaims, "Saddam Insane, twisted brain, Gotta say g'bye to his evil reign! Sad Iraqis' house of pain, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam Insane!" Inspiring songs such as "United We Stand," "Flight 93," "American Heroes (At Ground Zero)," and "America Will Win" celebrate American freedom, valor, and determination...

Promising, but he's got nothin' on the Goldwaters.

METS UPDATE. Noo Yawk dropped one to the Expos tonight. Piazza stranded seven baserunners. Ty Whatshisname (Wigglesworth? Worthington?) hit well, but Cedeno's not batting his weight. Timo Perez caught a pitch on his hand. It didn't look good, and he got called for strike three, having come around with the bat while trying to avoid the ball. Shinjo made a nice leaping catch -- highlight of the Mets' game. It'll be a long season.

CORPORATE CITIZENS.The afterwar is an annoying subject, so how about a Den Beste-size post on the European Union? I notice that Hungary is in. Oddly, their referendum drew less than half the eligible voters. You don't expect that kind of apathy from the newly-freed. And some people believe that Poland's June EU vote will be similarly light.

The Polish prediction (great title for something, huh?) factors in a general "disarray" in Polish politics. But you don't have to be politically fragile, it seems, to have a weak EU turnout.

According to this 1999 BBC report, as the EU's power has grown, voter interest has actually declined:

The UK turnout - the lowest in the union at just 23.3% - also followed the pan-European downward trend since the last elections in 1994, when 36% of UK voters made it to the polling stations.

This year, all countries but Ireland have seen fewer people putting a cross on ballot slips.

"What people don't realise is they have failed to vote for people who have the power to change their lives," said Mr Brittan.

This EU voting roundup shows a few high vote-producing states (e.g. Luxembourg, Italy, and Greece, which all cracked 70 percent), but generally the major nations did not recruit many balloters. Germany, the UK, and France were under 50 percent compliance. The Dutch returned 29.9 percent. MEP (Member of European Parliament) voting played out to an average of 60 percent that year, but this would appear to represent a very wide range of national results. According to the EU's own research, "Although around 7 in 10 respondents said they intended to vote in the June 1999 elections, actual turnout rates were far lower, ranging from 24 percent in the UK to 90 percent in Belgium where voting is compulsory." [emphasis mine -- hey, how do you enforce compulsory voting, anyway?]

The Danes, bless them, had a record high turnout (87 percent) in 2000 -- in which they rejected the European Union.

According to this paper by Hilary Silver out of Brown University:

Nor are European Union institutions sufficiently democratic and responsive to popular opinion. Only half the Europeans surveyed by Eurobarometers support their country’s membership in the EU, and less than 45 percent feel satisfied with the way EU democracy works....

During times of rapid social change, citizens need reassurance that their sacrifices and risk-taking will be justified in the long run. That takes leadership. Given the weakness of the European Parliament, national elections serve as the main outlets for sentiments of malaise, mistrust or misery.

My quick gloss is that the more real the benefits of membership are to the citizens, the more likely they are to come out and vote. Slovenia, which could use some backup, got 60 percent out to approve the EU -- though that may have been inflated by the simultaneous referendum on NATO, which offers military support that voters in that troubled region might appreciate.

It may also suggest that the EU is, to many European citizens, a done deal. But that doesn't mean they expect anything of it. The Union is first and foremost an economic entity -- a way for the members to exponentiate their bargaining power in big, global deals. And as we have seen from our own globalization efforts hereabouts, that doesn't necessarily help the working folks -- not in any way we can feel (or spend), anyway.

In 2002 the Irish, having rejected in 2001 the eastward expansion of the EU to include 12 new members, were given a second chance to approve it by a nervous Irish government. It got over that time, but the turnout was under 50 percent. Seems like they responded, weakly, to badgering -- OK, OK, quit bugging me, I'll sign up.

Increasingly, here and abroad, we are becoming disengaged from our politics. The establishment of a new level of governance doesn't excite the Europeans any more than a new management structure would excite the workers in your average corporation. Maybe that's the new paradigm for what we are used to calling democracies -- corporate citizenship. The big boys propose the plan, and wait for it (or push for it) to gain momentum. We do vote, still, but with diminishing interest. Eventually, maybe, we'll just get the memo.

A LANDMARK DECISION. I just deleted a post. It wasn't all that bad -- a small shriek of outrage at Matt Welch -- but I hadn't thought it through and I wasn't happy with it. Rather than do reeks and wrecks on it, I threw it out. (The other post I put up while equally drunk ain't the best either, but it's close enough for blog 'n' roil and so it stands.)

After all, this isn't a diary. It's a priceless work of art.

KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD. "Kurds Looting Sweeps Across Liberated Kirkuk" says the Washington Post. The Red Cross and others are asking the U.S. to do its duty by its newly liberated charges, the same paper reports. But to no avail. Hospitals in Iraq are crowded with the dying (dying? in our surgical strike? how did that happen?), with the lights out and the water run dry. From the Guardian:

The man had been dumped near the rubbish bins at the back, blood spreading across his chequered shirt. An orderly, who had been burying bloated corpses in a mass grave in the hospital grounds, recited the Muslim last rites. "Dead, dead, he's died, what can we do?" and returned to his shovel. But the man was breathing, in slow laborious gurgles, and his flesh was warm.

Forty-eight hours after Baghdad was liberated - as President George Bush would call it - by American forces, the city yesterday was in the throes of chaos. Men with Kalashnikovs dragged drivers from their cars at gunpoint, babies were killed by cluster bombs, and hospitals that had carried on right through the bombing were transformed into visions of hell.

But ignore that. Ignore the officially-unnumbered dead. Look at the fallen statue of Saddam! Read the propaganda that tells you how grateful you should be for this sweeping victory of freedom, bought with blood and billions. Learn to hate those that objected. Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rockin' in the free world.

CITY LIFE. According to Newsday, Governor Pataki is still against addressing our City's budget shortfalls with a commuter tax, but likes several alternatives, the most remunerative among these "tolls on East River bridges." If he has his druthers (and he will, friends, he will), out-of-towners who use our facilities every weekday will continue to pay bupkis toward their upkeep, while folks who drive from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back will be dunned a couple bucks a pop.

On the plus side, he also suggests a "50 percent surcharge on absentee landlord-owned apartment buildings," which will at least inspire a few sitcom pilots:

Listen, Achmed, if anyone asks, you're the landlord, get me? Look, I got papers made out and everything!

Oh, sir! To think that I, a humble rat-catcher, should rise to become the proprietor of such a fine slum! I shall not fail you, sir! As my first official act, I will install an intercom!

Look, smart guy, don't get any ideas! See this address? That's where you deposit the rent checks!

Oh my goodness, sir! This bank is in the Cayman Islands! Please tell me, what subway do I take to get there?

Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooh, you'll be the death of me, Achmed of Bushwick! (cue music)

You think Danny DeVito's up for another sitcom?

FATHER OF LIES.“New Yorkers broke into cheers yesterday as they gathered in cold drizzle in Times Square to watch on live TV the end of Saddam’s reign of terror.”

The New York Post reporters (three of them on this story!) decline to give a crowd estimate. The accompanying photo shows images of Baghdad on the Jumbotron high over Times Square, and a couple of umbrellas. Four passers-by are quoted.

At this point, careful readers will tumble to the fact that the Post reporters were tasked with creating a “V-I Day” (or is it V-S?) story to make the world see how dizzy with liberation fever are the citizens of 9/11-ville. Unfortunately most of us were busy at, or looking for, work. So, instead of an iconic clinch, they gave us a picture of a big TV and the headline “Cheers of Victory in Times Square.” (Also unfortunately, the primary audience for the Post does not include too many careful readers.)

Meanwhile the hapless reporters’ boss, Rupert Murdoch, has gained control of Direct TV in the United States, making him, per The World Today, “the dominant player in Pay TV on the world stage.” So expect this sort of crack journalism to expand unabated into every home that is equipped with a telescreen.

IT'S A JOKE, ANDY. Andrew Sullivan, physiologically unable to produce humor, proves himself equally unable to recognize it. He carries a quote by Eric Alterman from the New York Observer, which said Alterman "was 'enormously gratified' by the reception to his book (good review in The Times), but added that he was also disappointed because the book had 'been crowded out by the war,' and thus it had been hard to get 'traction.' 'I had a lot of reasons to be anti-war, and the book was a small one,' he said."

Sullivan's gloss: "Did your jaw just break your coffee mug?"

I thought Brits were supposed to appreciate drollery, what?

HOW SPIN WORKS: A CONTINUING SERIES. "The White House warned North Korea, Iran and Syria on Wednesday to 'draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq' as the UN Security Council struggled to respond to Pyongyang's apparent revival of its nuclear weapons program." --International Herald Tribune.

"Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Az., said Wednesday that comments reportedly uttered by ex-President Bill Clinton falsely accusing President Bush of preparing to invade North Korea could be 'very damaging' to efforts to ease tensions between Washington, D.C. and Pyongyang... The Arizona Republican said he feared that Clinton's remark could prompt Kim to 'try to do something preemptively. And that would be very, very bad.'" -- NewsMax.

"You're gonna kick yourselves when I show you how he did this, it's so simple. 'Cause magic is all about...misdirection."--"The Amazing Maleeni," The X-Files.

UH-OH, #3,452. "Congressional Republicans, working with the Bush administration, are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping anti-terrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Tuesday." -- San Francisco Chronicle.

ANDY'S GANG. I keep thinking of Al Pacino and Tony Roberts in Serpico -- "Ooh, anudder guy! We got anudder guy here!" On the heels of Andrew Sullivan's latest veiled traitor-baiting (see below), we get Donald Luskin at NRO: "The liberal punditocracy is about to face the sum of all fears: a world in which President Bush took the nation to war over all their objections, doubts, and second-guesses -- and won."

For those of you who need it more carefully explained: right-wing propagandists -- whether motivated by meme or marching order, I can't tell -- have started talking as if liberals had backed Saddam Hussein in the recent war (an even more slanderous extension of the "objectively pro-Saddam" slur). Luskin's particular take ("The left-leaning pundits must think of something — anything! — about which they can conclude: 'If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield'") is particularly instructive. He takes the liberal suggestion that an ill-advised war may lead to unfortunate consequences for the United States, and willfully misreads it as an attempt to make the President look like a Big Loser. We're just saying that, in other words, to make him look bad.

When criticism is presumed to be nothing more than a tactic, it need not be addressed. See how it works?

The wingers will need this head of steam, as the jubilation of Baghdad may not long distract the American public from the horrible state of our own nation's economy. But it does make things easier when you can just call your opponent a traitor.

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ANDYLAND. "Monsieur Mohammed Said Sahaf (why do I think of these Iraqi nutjobs as somehow French?)..." --Andrew Sullivan.

(Best Elaine Benes voice:) Well, that's because you're an idiot.

Elsewhere in Andyland, the proprietor sneers that Maureen Dowd "writes with astonishing glibness, 'We were always going to win the war with Iraq.' Oh, really? I don't remember her saying such a thing before." Similarly, her failure to note that E=Mc² proves she doesn't believe in the Theory of Relativity.

Or maybe he's saying that MoDo had her money on the Iraqi Republican Guard. That's the thing about Sullivan: you can never tell quite he's trying to say, but you can bet it's something stupid.

FOR THAT HE CREEPS. West Hollywood, CA, has made it illegal to declaw cats within its city limits. I must applaud this enlightened development. These magnificent critters were worshipped in ancient Egypt, yet in our own time they are subject to myriad humiliations -- none more disgusting than the preeminent cat character on TV, Salem in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, portrayed by some kind of animatronic puppet as a true Uncle Tomcat.



Their storied independence, their celebration by great English poets, and the way my Nelson and Bella forthrightly demand (never begging, as dogs would) their meals, and lazily admire every good thing that comes to them, such as the sunlight streaming through the living room window, as their due rather than as a gift, tesifies to the superiority of their spirit. It makes sense that they would win such a victory well before any community of dogs was liberated from, say, choke collars or ugly sweaters. At this rate, they'll achieve independence sooner than Guam.

"DON'T WORRY, GOVERNOR STEVENSON, THE THINKING PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY ARE WITH YOU!" "YES, BUT I NEED A MAJORITY." The war is in its endgame, and already the war advocates are taking the opportunity to slander their opposition: You're all traitors, you love Saddam, no one likes you...

In case some of you youngsters who haven't been through this before are feeling a great sense of injustice right about now, let me tell you straight: you have every reason to feel that way. Nothing succeeds like success, and everyone wants to be on the winning team, even if they missed the first three quarters. Also, when faced with the choice between, on the one hand, believing that their Government would spend billions of dollars and dozens of American lives on a selfless mission of mercy, and, on the other hand, believing that their Government cynically overinflated a threat through lies and jingoism in order to take over a large, oil-rich country, the American people are going to make the choice that's easiest on themselves. I mean, when they have to travel a hundred yards to pick up a bottle of milk, they usually take a car -- how drawn to challenge do you think they are?

So, for a while, it'll be a little lonely for thinking people. As I spent more than a year demonstrating, nonsense is in fashion right now. You just won't be cool for some time.

Whether you can stick it depends on how devoted you are to being right. If you doubt your devotion, you might as well pick up your pennant and head off to the night rally right now. If your understanding of what it means to be an American doesn't absolutely force you to insist that two and two make four, then the historical observation that these things tend to run in cycles, and that our day will come, will not hold you to it. There's only one reason to choose what's right over what's wrong, and that's because it's right.

WHEN YOU'RE A MET YOU'RE A MET ALL THE WAY. Finally caught a Mets game on TV yesterday. Mike Piazza blocked the plate to save a run but got knocked over and dropped the ball. Our own Iron Mike! (He did throw a guy out, though -- yeah, you heard me right -- but he had a little help from the second base umpire, who didn't notice that Cedeno had dropped the ball.) Benitez very badly blew a save, and the booing at Shea would have done credit to Michael Moore. And hey, Shinjo's back! I'm definitely getting out to the ballpark soon. I'll catch one of those budget games -- the Mets have adopted a three-tiered system and charge less for games against weak teams. The way things are going, though (I know it's early, but despair springs eternal) I expect they'll be having clearance sales soon enough. Maybe I'll go up to the box office and make an offer.

PRIZES. The Pulitzers just came out and the Drama prize went to a guy named Nilo Cruz. No, I never heard of him either, but I don't doubt the wisdom of the Committee. Nilo's apparently a very young man, and associated with New Dramatists, at which a reading of one of my plays was given, once. Yeah, my career's taking off like a rocket.

But you know what last week's number-one movie was? "Phone Booth." It was written by Larry Cohen -- an old Hollywood hand responsible for "It's Alive," and "Black Caesar," and the great "Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover," a hallucinogenic biopic in which a sexually repressed young J. Edgar (James Wainwright), after a disastrous encounter with Ronee Blakely, turns into Broderick Crawford. Old song-and-dance man Dan Dailey plays Hoover's beloved Clyde Tolson with admirably repressed homosexual tension. Jose Ferrer, as Lionel McCoy, watches an anti-Vietnam demonstration in Washington and announces, in his best Jose Ferrer voice, "My God! It's like the goddamned Russian Revolution!" "You get the feeling," an imdb poster says, " you're being told this story by a gossipy wife under the hair dryer in a salon." Like that's a bad thing! Not to be missed.

Congratulations all around.

CAN YOU TELL that I'm depressed? Good. Maybe I'm fooling everyone else, too.

MIXED BAG. Right-wing hag Peggy Noonan writes that celebrities are ashamed of their country and talk too loudly in restaurants and George Bush has guts. But she also writes that she won't be appearing at OpinionJournal much for a while. One less! One less!

CLETUS DISCOVERS THE FIRST AMENDMENT. For decades kids have been into political insignia as fashion statements. I even sported a little Lenin pin for a while because I thought it looked cool. And we all remember Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson wearing Irons Crosses in those AIP biker movies.

So I don't take too seriously the desire of these young chuckleheads to wear Confederate flag T-shirts. They're just stickin' it to the man, dude.

And I expect in the long run it will be a great education for these young'uns to deal with the effects of walking around a heterogenous society in T-shirts that basically say "I think it was rad when black people were slaves." Unless they don't live in a heterogenous society (for all I know, Beaufort, SC may be whiter than an Aryan snowdrift), in which case their chances at educability are probably slim anyway.

That's what diversity is all about. We each get to choose the kind of community we want to inhabit. I, for example, choose to live in New York, far away from the mouth-breathing, redneck dipshits wearing Confederate flag T-shirts. Isn't democracy lovely? Enjoy it while it lasts!

JESUS -- OF NAZARETH? I CANNOT CALL HIM TO MIND. It has been suggested that my Phil Ochs quote below is inapposite, as our troops are being nice to the Iraqi civilians. That's to their credit, of course. And I expect they'll go on being nice, in Iraq and in the other countries that, Ralph Peters and others suggest, we will wind up visiting soon. But empires don't stay nice for long, as can be seen by the example of the Romans -- or, as Peters has it, the previous version of us. It's possible, of course, that we'll be different. We certainly used to be.

IN CASE THERE WAS ANY DOUBT. "America is, indeed, the modern Rome. And Rome does not ask permission of Thebes or obey the orders of Gaul." -- Ralph Peters, NY Post. Buh-bye, shining city on a hill. Here come the cops of the world.

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BLOG. I have said some negative things about the personal weblog phenomenon and its attendant diarism. Most people aren't that interesting, and most people can't write for toffee, bless them, so the net result looks like a worldwide Creative Writing class with no instructor and few star (or even competent) pupils.

I've loosened up a bit about that. (Wrong? The great El Droso? -- ed. Who are you? -- re) Getting into the swing of it here on the Blogger-enabled site, I've found the ease of posting is a good or a bad thing depending on one's judgement at any given moment, and that this could over time positively affect my spot-writing skills (a big plus, since that's largely how I make my living). And it beats hell out of morning pages. The threat of publication, like the prospect of hanging, powerfully concentrates the mind.

And I don't sigh so much these days over the explosion of bad prose. I got bigger things to worry about.

Besides, some of the blogs are fun. I found this one via the Blogger homepage. It seems to be run by a bunch of kids who've found a semi-abandoned building and want to have parties in it. They spend much of their online time like this:

This day was awesome. And Furrows is by far the most awesome place I've ever been to, as well as the FREAKIEST. The scarriest part was that giant hole in the wall with the 15-foot drop. THAT was freaky. THAT was more creepier then the scarey graffitii on the walls. Things were great.

and

I'm not just gonna punch him you little brat! you forg you never pay attention to anything! I've been pissed off at nathan for months!

Maybe it would be better if Andy Hardy and the gang put on a show instead of doing this, but it's hella cute nonetheless.

A RUSTY TIN CAN AND AN OLD HURLEY BALL. It's early -- but how early? I guess an hour less early thanks to Daylight Saving Time. But that doesn't matter -- hell, it's wonderful. DST is another of the harbringers of Spring -- like the weird patches we've been having of warm weather. It's cold at the moment, damp and cold, but we've been reminded by the warm spells, and now by this clock-spin, that the cold always passes, and that the hissing of the radiators will soon enough give way to the voice of the turtle. We know, here in a City as eternal as the change of seasons, that no matter how awful things seem, and so matter how sad I may often feel, soon there'll be sidewalk cafes crammed with happy citizens, rollerbladers, rolled-down cab windows, and shirts open at the throat. Maybe that's why I was especially happy to bash a borrowed guitar at a friend's dinner party last night as the boys and girls sang old rock songs, and to come home afterwards and play till dawn the Pogues, and to hear again that glorious old drunk sing about daybreak in another great city,

For it's stupid to laugh and it's useless to bawl
About a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball
Take my hand, and dry your tears, babe
Take my hand, forget your fears, babe
There's no pain, there's no more sorrow
They're all gone, gone with the years, babe
So I watched as day was dawning
Where small birds sang and leaves were falling
Where we once watched the rowboats landing
By the broad majestic Shannon

THE ZONE OF REASON. I see the estimable Kevin Drum has caught on to Josh Marshall's epochal "Practice to Deceive" article.

This seems a point at which all of us in the Zone of Reason can congregate. I often think of Drum as one of those wimpy liberals, like the Presidente in Viva Zapata! who goes to a secret meeting with the opposition leader and, while getting mowed down by a hail of bullets, cries, "What you do is wrong!" But as the situation grows more dire, I find myself increasingly identifying with his reasonable-but-doomed tone -- like the guys at the end of Vonnegut's "Player Piano," who resist the new fascism "for the record" alone, without any hope that it will affect anything but, with luck, some future generation that might bother to read that record.

Because the country seems, at present, nuts. Yesterday's NYT Business section (the Times' business section is often most interesting on Saturday) carried a story called "In Their Hummers, Right Beside Uncle Sam." It carried testimonials from workaday jackasses who think the fact that they bought themselves expensive military vehicles to drive around their hometown streets connects them in some way with the war effort. "I'm proud of my country," says one such clown, "and I'm proud to be driving a product that is making a significant contribution." Quoth other Humdaddies: "Those who deface a Hummer in word or deed deface the American flag and what it stands for" and "The Hummer is a car in uniform. Right now we are in a time of uncertainty, and people like strong brands with basic emotions."

To explain what is grotesquely inappropriate about the civilian use of military vehicles on suburban streets is not worth the bother. I have acquired a certain patience from teaching remedial English, because I understand that need, as schools no longer do their job in that regard. But the guys in the Times article, who clearly never absorbed common sense from their parents, are in my view beyond remediation. They would, in a perfect world, be committed to institutions that would patiently instruct them in the fundamental values of human society. But in our imperfect world, these madmen are not a pathetic subset, but exemplars of their age. The only madhouse big enough for them is America.

The only comfort I can find is from Peter Boyle in Taxi Driver: "We're all fucked -- more or less." In some ways I'm as insane as these guys. I love big American things, too: outsized power chords, breasts, public monuments, and ambitions. But I never thought these were objective correlatives to patriotism. I never thought America was great because it was big. I thought it was big because it was great.

Someone's got it backwards. I don't think it's me.

AFTER BAGHDAD. I hate to be one of those guys who just links an article, pulls a money graf, and tell you to read the whole thing. But In this case I can't help myself. Josh Marshall has a great piece in the Washington Monthly about the real long-term aims of this Administration in the Middle East. I've often read the exhortations of Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen and wondered if he could be serious. He is, and he's not the only, nor the most highly placed, one. And, as promised, here's one of several Marshall money grafs:

Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

That agenda comprises a long, bloody, costly drive to pacify the Middle East -- all of it, pretty much -- by force or threat thereof, accomplished with little input or assistance from the rest of the civilized world.

Such as it is, the plan has its attractions ("Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s," writes Marshall, "you can hear yourself saying, 'That plan's just crazy enough to work'"). And you can understand why its high-level advocates have been keeping it on the down-low -- a couple of American Presidents have asked the nation to finish a World War, but none before now has asked us to start one.

But it induces shivers to contemplate how disingenuously, and how easily, we are led down this dark and dismal path. Marshall notes that "the brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals." The ruinous tax plans, ominous Patriot Acts, and other life-changing measures that fly, barely noticed, through Congress seem to bear him out. Our course is uncharted, our progress headlong, and we watch American Idol and night-vision footage and hope for the best.

Something will come of this, wrote Dickens once, I hope it mayn't be human gore. But that, now more than ever, is hoping against hope.

STOP THE PRESSES. "Faultline under Los Angeles could cause huge earthquake" --The Independent.

In other breaking news, saturated fats are bad for you, and you can't cheat an honest man.

MICHAEL KELLY DEAD. I never liked the guy's politics, but this is just awful. How sad for his family, his friends, and his colleagues and readers. There's nothing else I can say.

THE STORY SO FAR. "CNN's medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta (a neurosurgeon) has been with a medical unit that does not have a neurosurgeon. So when an Iraqi child who needed brain surgery came in, they asked CNN's doctor for help. He did. And now, no one can stop talking about it. Am I wrong? I think it is great he tried to save the boy (who later died), but isn't that his job?... I'm pretty sure the only reason this is a big deal is because CNN is making it so, for understandable reasons..." -- Kathryn Jean Lopez.

That's an understandable, though seemingly ungenerous, POV. It's similar to what I've been saying about Giuliani and September 11. People get mad when I say it, though.

The camera's eye puts everything in a new perspective, and now and again even those who have been following the Story So Far with popcorn and pennant in hand will notice that this Story is, to a large extent, guided by Storytellers. There's real heroism afoot every day, of course. You don't need a camera to see it.

But we're used to getting our heartwarming stories from cable. When you have an interest in how others see the world (since, to a greater or lesser extent, it can effect decisions that have an impact on your own life), sometimes you'll become aware that the capital-S story is out of sync with the one you, like each of us, constantly construct for yourself.

Maybe that's the time to turn off the TV for a while.

WHEN THE CAMERAS SPIN AROUND. A lot of weblog operators are following every jot and tittle of the war reportage -- This guy does a good job of getting to the pith. (In a recent entry he quotes Rumsfeld saying American forces are “closer to central Baghdad than many American commuters are from their downtown offices.”)

This moment-to-moment tracking of the invasion is not too interesting to me. I expect the U.S. will win this one -- call it a hunch -- and the precise moment the bridge at Al-Whatsit is taken just isn't uppermost in my thoughts.

I do note with interest doings on the home front, including Treasury Secretary Snow's recent statement: ""As a matter of principle, this administration believes we have an obligation to the American people to rebuild our economy, even as we protect our national security... Choosing one over the other is a false choice."

You read this and realize: while we've been paying attention to the inexhorable drive toward Baghdad, people are losing their shirts back home. Once the cameras spin back around, everything is going to look very different.

The IMF is sanguine ("Chance of U.S. Recession Now Only 15 Percent"), but most of us on the ground (particularly Ground Zero and thereabouts) don't have so rosy an outlook. We're not the only country with an economy, either, and the jitters are widespread. A walk through the global bankruptcy news gives some idea why.

Will the tax cut package help? Consider this report from New Jersey: "The idea as outlined by a state economic adviser would have the state tax billions of dollars freed up by President Bush's proposed tax cuts and use the money to help cure New Jersey's ailing budget situation." They're talking about taxing the tax cuts.

Economists have all kinds of explanations, and our national-greatness President seems content to will stimulus into existence, but in my experience, the money has to come from somewhere, and after the last big run on entitlements in the previous decade, there just aren't that many seat cushions to look under anymore.

In a little while we'll be in the post-war occupation phase, and that'll probably precipitate a quick spike in the stock market (and longer-term economic benefits for some). But generally I fear we'll be seeing a different kind of devastation when the Iraqi smoke clears.

SHIT IN A CORNER. Just visited NRO's The Corner for the first time in a while. Imagine a dozen hardcore New York Rangers fans with their faces painted blue, locked in a steel tank for two weeks with a truckload of beer and chips and a TV set. That gives you some idea of the level of discourse therein.

Between the celebratory roars, clinically degenerate anti-French ravings ("Chirac's frog fedayeen...Putains de merd"), and increasingly bizarre jokes, the place has become a literal madhouse.

They disdain their own weak, too. Ned Flanders even said goodbye forever and no one offered him so much as a pat on the ass.

It's like Free Republic for people who know how to read.

WAR OF WORDS. Whatever their other relative merits and demerits, you have to admit that Saddam is a better rhetorician than GWB. But his style has slipped some since '91. During Gulf War I, my friend Chet made these telling comparisons between the rhetoric of Bush I and Saddam:

Bush: We have drawn a line in the sand.
Saddam: The mother of all battles has begun.

Bush: This will not stand.
Saddam: We will make the enemy drown in his own blood.

That's fustian, by Allah! Now we have a recent statement, alleged from Big S, saying that the Coalition forces "are not even 100 miles (away from Baghdad). They are not anywhere. They are like a snake moving in the desert." A nice analogy -- but nonetheless, he exhorts his troops to fight these allegedly faraway troops "with your hands." (I assume armament is running low.)

Not bad, but certainly not up to his old standards. Could Saddam have mellowed with age?

In the event that Saddam is really dead or nearly so, it may be time for the other crack wordsmiths in the bunker to take over. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, for example, has penned this tribute to the U.S.: "They are a superpower of villains... They are a superpower of Al Capone." He also referred to Bush as the "leader of the international criminal gang of bastards."

There's some of the old fire! And al-Sahaf will have plenty of time to hone his delivery in Den Hague.

SCHADEN-FRAUD. Instapundit rejoices that England's Mirror has lost circulation due to its "anti-war stance."

In the same long-view mode as yesternight, I am intrigued by the idea that if a newspaper takes up an unpopular cause, presumably on principle (since there is no other reason for doing so), its enemies should find vindication in the paper's loss of sales. Going against the tide is hard, and exacts a price. Grown-ups know that.

The Mirror's editor appears to be a grown-up. In the article IP links, Pier Morgan explains his paper's performance:

Do I think our anti-war line is to blame for any of the drop? Possibly a bit among our older readers who think it's unpatriotic to continue criticising the war now it's started. But the overwhelming reaction to our coverage from our readers has been totally supportive... We just won't be hypocrites and change our line that we shouldn't have started it in the first place

One has to admire his "stay," whatever the financials.

Morgan also suggests that the Mirror has been affected by the Sun's price-cutting maneuvers (a situation with which any New Yorker aware of Murdoch's loss-leading Post will be familiar), and has some choice words for blowhard former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil. All told, Morgan comes off well. Small wonder IP forewent his usual "read the whole thing" sign-off.

TAKING THE LONG VIEW. It may be that epidemological aggressiveness will cut SARS off at the global pass. Maybe not. At least the illness won't spread as quickly as it would have if we were all clueless about and inattentive to fast-spreading disease.

But -- indulge me a moment. Doesn't it suck that we have to be so attentive to such things? I mean, it's the Twenty-First century, and we are obliged to cower before the spread of plague as if this were the 14th Century. Next thing you know we'll all be wearing plastic beaks stuffed with aromatherapeutics.

The world at war, unknown illness spreading, all areas of human endeavor at a creative low ebb. I'm beginning to feel a little ungrateful to have been born into this splendid age -- even considering that we have, like, iPods and mp3s and blogs.

SAVING PRIVATE LYNCH. V. Postrel (link found via that awful man) makes the point that it is inappropriate for newsreaders to refer to Pvt. Jessica Lynch as "Jessica," as she is a U.S. soldier, not "the little girl who fell down the well." Well said. I had the same thought today while watching Katie Couric talk about "Jessica" to the rescued soldier's (understandably dazed) father.

I can imagine, though, where this media infantilism is coming from. Pvt. Lynch is a very young woman of the sort for whom the adjective "fresh-faced" was invented. In her official picture, shown frequently on the news of late, she flashes a bright, can-do smile. She hails from the charmingly named Palestine, West Virginia, and wants to be a schoolteacher.

For many, her perils, and those of any such female, will always be as those of Pauline. She is the very model of an All-American girl -- but she is also a soldier. A lot of people probably may have trouble processing that last part of ther resume.

But not because, as some warbloggers would have it, she's a "bellicose woman" and poster child for the NRA Chick Auxiliary (Pvt. Lynch doesn't particularly seem like someone who would take pride in being called bellicose, even if she were draped in a dozen armaments). Her military service in a foreign land is new and unusual because, unlike being a schoolteacher and having a can-do smile (as glorious as those things really are), it implies a level of responsibility that transcends the little red schoolhouse and even the town meeting. Pvt. Lynch, like her comrades, deals with the world -- in the current situation, on the level of confrontation. Her decision to join the service turned out to be, whether she knew it or not (though I like to imagine she did -- she does want to be a teacher), a decision to engage the world, not as a spectator or a tourist, but as part of a force that shapes its destiny.

To me that's more of a leap into the future of intergender relations than the fact that she was issued a gun.

Now, as to how she and others are shaping the world, that's another issue entirely...

WELCOME TO THE WORKING WEEK. I went down to the employee cafeteria for yet another cup of coffee and did the after-you dance with a bald, white-shirted little fellow who was crowding the spigots.

"If I'm in your way," he said cheerfully, "go on and kick me."

I laughed in a collegial and meaningless way and got my coffee.

"Just kick me," he repeated, "I'm used to it."

"Who isn't," I said. Big laughs all around.

"The outlook for jobs in 2003 and 2004 deteriorated slightly from the previous poll as economists factored in the start of war in Iraq and the meagre increase in fourth quarter business investment after two years of decline." -- Forbes magazine, April 1

IF YOU SEE TWO OF THE PREVIOUS POST don't ask me what the problem is (though I have a pretty good guess).