"PRETEND YOU LIVE IN AMERICA." Jimmy Breslin's always worth reading, seldom more so than in this column, in which the old guy looks at the Iyman Faris case and, not being properly coached in the new realities, calls it for what it is:

Friday, the newspapers and television reported the following matter with no anger or effort to do anything other than serve as stenographers for the government:

On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen they say is Iyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no postcards or letters.

He was a United States citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world...

They held him secretly in an iron world for the next six weeks. This is plenty of time to hand out giant beatings. Oh, yes, don't gasp. If cops are performing a Fascist act, then always suspect them of acting like Fascists. They have fun beating people up.

In mid-April, again in deep secrecy, the government says Faris was allowed to plead guilty to plotting to pull down or blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He was in a sealed Virginia federal courtroom. If he had a lawyer, that was some lawyer.

After that, he was sentenced. We don't know what the sentence was because it is sealed.

I don't know what Faris looks like or sounds like or what he thinks and what he was doing. He could be the worst. I don't know. Prove he wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and let him paste a picture of Osama bin Laden on the cell wall for inspiration over the next half a century. But first bring him into open court and try him. Pretend you live in America. Even pick a jury...

Hacks may whinge at the archaism of his style, but Breslin on his worst day wipes the floor with their candy asses every time. And reason isn't too technical. It's because Breslin knows what he sees, and tells us. None of this prevaricating horseshit for him. Things either add up or they don't.

This doesn't add up. And he's right, not enough reporters have said so. When Breslin stops doing this gig, we'll all be a lot closer to mushroom status.

A METHOD TO HIS DUMBNESS. While I do enjoy those pictures of Bush falling off a Segway, I also wonder if we aren't being conned.

The Village Voice seems to think Bush could get impeached for lying about WMD in Iraq (found via WTF Is It Now? which seems to agree). I think that's far-fetched, but our President, not known especially for personal valor, might be feeling a little nervous about it.

So maybe Bush is trying to revive and exploit that perception of himself which his spin doctors once labored so valiantly to decommission: the perception that Bush is a dumbass.

While falling off a supposedly un-fall-offable Segway is more on the clumsy than the stupid tip, it must be remembered that stupidity and clumsiness are often conjoined in the minds of the masses (cf. Inspector Clouseau, Gerald Ford). Plus, Bush may have wanted to kick off Operation Lookame Imadumbass with a bold physical schtick, as most of his constituents are themselves too poorly educated to notice even his most egregiously deformed syntax and reasoning.

If Operation Lookame Imadumbass is a success, the Democrats can raise as many Bills of Impeachment as they like. By then Bush will be walking around dressed like Jethro Bodine, with one tooth blacked out perhaps, and answering all questions by hollering "How the HAAAIL am I spozed to know? AH'M A DUMBASS!" and waving his arms spastically. He can then beg off charges on the grounds of mental incapacity.

Hell, it worked for Reagan.

SEND MONEY, THEY'RE STARVING -- FOR ATTENTION! The NRO pledge drive must be doing really badly. The Corner hasn't been this nuts since the war. Now they're going on about Keynes being gay. Derbyshire calls him "gay as a convention of hairdressers," observes, "'In the long run we're all dead' -- That is not the kind of thing a family man would say," and asks his readers for more info on Keynes' sex life. Jonah Goldberg adds, "The fact that Keynes was gay might be relevant as to why he held the views he did." Well, you can't say they're always thinking Clinton's cock, anyway.

Also, Goldberg picks up the Ole Perfesser's article-style blogroll at TCS (synopsis: Me and my buddies rock. Liberals are stupid and cowardly. Gee, that Andrew Sullivan sure can write) and asks why leftists (as he and Reynolds allege) don't sign their blog writings. Given the quality of what Goldberg churns out, I could as well ask why he does sign his.

ANOTHER CONTESTANT IN THE WORST-WMD-EXCUSE CONTEST. Richard Brookhiser:

What if Werner von Braun had told us after V-E Day that, yes, in theory it would have been nice to have an A-bomb, and that Heisenberg and his crowd had looked into the subject -- but, given the intellectual and logistical obstacles, the project had simply been abandoned?

Yeah, dude, what if? What if Hitler had invaded, say, only Lichtenstein instead of several European countries -- or if Saddam Hussein were at any time in his reign capable of lobbing missles any further than a few hundred miles (and if any of those missles were able to do any serious damage)?

Then Brookhiser's amazing historical non-sequitur would still make no fucking sense.

The rest of the column is just as bad.

DERB SNAPS! As aforementioned, the NRO kids have been playing it cute during pledge drive. Maybe they're not bringing in enough money, because strain is beginning to show. Behold John Derbyshire:

69-year-old Harry Hammond, arrested last year in England and fined over $1,000 for holding up a placard that said: STOP IMMORALITY. STOP HOMOSEXUALITY. STOP LESBIANISM I am willing to bet that a poll of homosexuals would show a majority believing that this prosecution was right and proper--probably, in fact, a majority feeling that Mr Hammond got off too lightly. Homosexual activists will stop at nothing to shut down all discussion of, and objection to, their "lifestyle." They do not want mere tolerance or grudging acceptance: they want whole-hearted approval, with the silencing, by force of law, of anyone who does not approve.

One awaits sourcing from Derbyshire, though of course without holding one's breath.

If you want more anti-gay ravings, you can go to the lead-lined fart chamber in which they keep David Frum.

WHAT HAPPENS TO A MEME DEFERRED? Hey kids, says Andrew Sullivan, if we all clap our hands as hard as we can, we'll save Tinkerbell -- I mean, if we all blog about Iran on July 9, we'll overthrow the mullahs!

(Eventually, when Iran falls, excitable Andy will tells us all about the role played by the blogs.)

I preferred it when Sullivan was just asking us to call him an "eagle." Wonder how that meme's going?

BEYOND BELIEF. Slate's "In Other Magazines" column links to a dilly: a column at the Weekly Standard calling for a new "great American newspaper." Billy Kristol sounds the charge with one of those plainly unbelievable assertions his kind are made for: "Its editorial page could be conservative or liberal, as long as it was thoughtful and serious..."

Already Bluto is coughing "Blowjob!" behind his fist. Does anyone who has ever read or heard more than a few sentences from Kristol believe he means this? Of course not -- it's as big a load of crap as Fox's "fair and balanced."

Soon enough Kristol gives readers the wink: the New Paper should not be "ignorantly disdainful of Red America..." Nudge nudge, say no more.

We're talking, in other words, about a conservative house-organ which would not be perceived as such. Later at the Standard, expostulating on Kristol's theme, David Gelertner is more obvious, praising "the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal" and the laughable New York Sun as models.

The recent troubles at the New York Times have brought forth an ocean of crocodile tears over journalism besmirch'd. Like most professions of disappointment made by lifelong enemies, they are largely unbelievable.

While some Times critics are motivated by personal vendetta (like the most disappointed office-seeker since Charles Guiteau), and some few by genuine concern for j-standards, most of the current mob are merely trying to discredit a paper that has historically backed Democratic candidates for office and (in some dimly-remembered past before Joe Lelyveld) flashed some teeth at the conservative movement.

In other words, pundits whose only interest (indeed, whose primary source of income) is propaganda are not reliable witnesses for pure journalism.

Claims of bias can be weighed and measured, but conservatives who claim ideological malfeasance at the Times have a hard time getting around the fact that the paper has a massive, highly professional infrastructure. When you can do anything as well as they do news, bias is literally a secondary issue.

The Times also has the one great benefit of reputation and seniority: at a time when most media outlets pander slavishly to the whims of its prospective readerships, the paper actually requires its audience to make some concessions to its own way of doing things. Those who complain that the Times has been "dumbed down" in recent years should get a load of what the competition is printing. Yeah, the Times does silly stuff like this, but that's a small drop in a big pond of remarkably comprehensive, literate coverage.

If you're smart enough to read the Times, you're smart enough to pick out the nits of bias. Falsehoods are something else again. The Times knows that -- which is why Jason Blair was fired. Indeed, that's ultimately why Raines and Boyd were "resigned." (It was, at least, the sword these two gave their enemies to use against them.)

As for Kristol's and Gelertner's white whale, I'll give it a look if it ever comes to pass, but I expect no better than the New York Post with big words.

WE'RE NOT FASCISTS, GIVE US MONEY. National Review Online is pulling another one of its lame libertarian acts. Goldberg leans against government intervention on matters of spam; Ponnuru agrees, prefers "less formal social pressures" (I'm all for that, but when I write spammers back with "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!" my message never gets through). John Miller is squishy on amnesty for illegal immigrants, Ponnuru raps sin taxes, and so forth.

I think it has to do with their current, strenuously-persued pledge drive -- it's easier to grub change with fun conservatism than the other kind.

Don't take it too seriously, though. None of them has anything to say about the flag-burning amendment bill recently pushed through the House. No fun NRO angle there! And the house argument about gay marriage is still so heavily weighted that the moderate position is represented by John Derbyshire telling homosexuals to shut up and be glad with what they've got. ("Stop pushing the envelope. Envelopes can break.")

I'm grateful for small blessings: Stuttaford's Finnish joke is quite good. Not worth any money, though.

COME ON, PEOPLE, THIS IS IMPORTANT! WIGB said last week, "Gregory Peck and David Brinkley both just died. These things tend to happen in threes. Who's going to be the third?"

Angus Young, according to the Castel-Dodge site, which reports the AC/DC guitarist dead since Thursday.

But there's nothing at this writing on AC/DC.net, nor at the Elektra AC/DC site except some querulous chat messages branding the report a lie.

If someone's fucking with us, I just have to tell him that I'm not having the greatest day, couldn't you have waited? Because Angus Young being dead would really suck.

UPDATE. Turns out to have been a rumor. I think. Castel-Dodge withdraws, nothing on news-fan sites. Weird...

POST HOC PROPTER HOC. Instapundit:

21ST CENTURY SUBURBAN PARADISE: I'm blogging on the laptop from the deck via wireless, while sipping a Redhook IPA and grilling steaks. Is this a great country, or what?

I'm blogging on my PowerMac 9500 from my slum via dial-up, while guzzling a Budweiser and burning a Pall Mall Light. This country sucks.

COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM AT WORK.The New York Post continues to push for an end to rent stabilization. As befits an operation wedded to the notion that landlords, once freed from the stabilization yoke, will start charging less for apartments, these boys are very good at logic games. Operative Steve Cuozzo today contributes this breathtaking bagatelle:

...the blocks south of Chambers Street are already enjoying an "affordable" housing boom. To understand this, it's necessary to strip the word of its politically correct context... None is likely to be cheap. But we may count on them to be affordable, which in the English language has but one meaning: What people are willing and able to pay for. Only in the dreamland of social engineering does "affordable" mean something quite different: what certain people - people of lesser means - can afford. It may drive socialist ideologues batty, but in Manhattan, all new apartment homes are affordable in the meaningful sense. This is not semantic sophistry, but fact.

Using similar rationales, we could demonstrate that tubercular bums living beneath an overpass are making a "living wage," because they are still alive.

"VITAMINS MAY BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH, STUDY SAYS." This is the most amazing yet of those headlines that just make you want to eat a bag of steak fat in despair. What the hell's next? "Captain Morgan Spiced Rum 'Safer Than Water,' Say Docs" or "Surgeon-General: Cut Down on Leafy Greens"?

You're on your own, kids. Pay attention to the way your body reacts to certain ingestibles, and go with the ones that make it feel good. (Be careful about intoxicants, which tend to feel very bad in the long run, or at least the morning after.)

"I DO NOT THINK ABOUT THINGS I DO NOT THINK ABOUT." What the hell? Jonah Goldberg today: "Bush spends too much money. Period. This is one of the downsides of so-called compassionate conservatism... I think Bush is a good president and I think he's a conservative president. But he is also a big government president in many respects. There's less of a contradiction there than some think, by the way, but that's a conversation for another day."

I guess this is how JG gets himself to write those long, horrible columns -- he makes a patently ridiculous statement, then spends 2000 words trying to make it sound sensible.

It does look to me, more every day, that the only thing holding the movement together these days is a lust for power (and, in Goldberg's case, high-calorie snack food). I know that's a common, even cheap charge, but really, what the hell do they believe in? Fiscal restraint? Please. Social policy? Yeah, they're active -- that Partial-Birth Abortion Ban will save dozens of potential lives. I guess you could put them down as in favor of "helping people." As long as they live in other countries. And who even believes them in that regard?

They can't even agree on traditional conservative rallying points, such as the persecution of homosexuals. Oh, tax cuts. They like tax cuts. And choc-o-mut ice creams.

I guess it's really all about making snotty comments about Frenchmen and Hillary Clinton. Well, there are worse ways to make a living.

PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT. Administration judicial appointee Bill Pryor has called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of the history of constitutional law" which has "led to the slaughter of millions of unborn children," among other ripe opinions. (Orrin Hatch praises Pryor as "open and honest in his political beliefs.") The Democrats, naturally, resist and refuse.

Good for them. But their struggle with Pryor and other such operatives is getting old. Not "old" in the sense of unfashionableness, but in the clinical sense; the Dems are not, to state the obvious, a font of legislative vigor; the center cannot hold, and that is probably what Bush is counting on.

It is worth noting that in the 91st Congress (1969-71), the earliest for which I can find an official resume, the lawmen received 134,464 executive nominations of all sorts, and left 666 unconfirmed, withdrawn, or "rejected" (a single nominee!), while the 105th Congress (1999-2000, and the last one that does not require downloading a damned PDF) considered 45,805, and left unconfirmed, withdrawn, or "returned to the White House" 1,972. Nixon in his first term lost less than one-half a percent of his noms, Clinton in his last lost a little over 4 percent, though he had sent only about a third as many contestants into that arena.

The current struggles threaten to set some kind of record. Given the chance of fatigue, might they not prove the worse course of action? (I say this as a rabid anti-Bushite, a defender of R v. W, and one who wishes Pryor sent with a hard kick from the bench presumptive to write Borkian jeremiads for the rest of his natural life.)

It may be getting on time for Congressional Dems to draw up a counter to the oft-threatened Human Life Amendment. We've relied on Roe and the 10th Amendment securely a while now, but Bush is busily sending redneck jurists crawling up the ass of the polity to roll them both back, and shows no sign of stopping. A filbuster or two laid low, a bad by-election here or there, and the jig is up.

Maybe we just ought to make it plain, and put it before the states, that reproductive rights are not the business of the U.S. Congress.

A strict-constructionist liberal might say that we have no business enumerating what the Constitution has already made plain. Perhaps, but the rights of black Americans, which might seem to an unbiased observer equally plain under the original Articles, eventually required the 13th, 15th, and 24th Amendments. That work is still not done, but would be a damned sight harder without them.

I know all the practical arguments against it, but our enemies are implaccable and, judging from their behavior in matters of both war and peace, utterly ruthless. If the elected members of the Democratic Party has doubts about the resolution of the people, let the people erase or confirm them. If they doubt their own ability to make their case, they really have no business representing their Party, or the devotion to liberty which is, as it was in Jefferson's time, its very reason for being.

Or, to put it in rankly partisan terms: looking for an issue? Here it is.

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ANDYLAND. From the alternate universe of Andrew Sullivan:

One thing the former president understands is power, and he knew full well that the resignation of Howell Raines at the NYT could hurt Democrats. The news might not be spun as ruthlessly as in the past; the campaign against the Bush administration under the guise of news coverage might not be as relentless; and so, apparently, Clinton intervened. This story, Clinton reminds us, wasn't just about journalism. At a deeper level it was also about politics; and Clinton wanted to protect a huge victory that the left had won with Raines' advancement. He lost. Journalism won.

In other world news, Clinton gave a bum a quarter, thereby conspicuously working to undermine, in a manner unbefitting a former President, the economic programs of George W. Bush.

Look at this 2001 dispatch from Howard Kurtz, recalling Raines' management of the Times' editorial page: "Once Clinton was elected, Raines's editorial page hammered him on Whitewater and improper fundraising, and during the Monica Lewinsky investigation said the president had 'embarrassed the nation' and 'sent out federal employees to lie on his behalf." Clinton was convinced that Raines, as a fellow Southerner, resented his success... 'Bill Clinton probably hated the Times editorial page under Howell Raines more than any other person in the United States,' [Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism] says..."

Raines and Clinton, two Southerners of the liberal persuasion, might as easily trade ass-pats as smacks upside the head. Powerful people tend to do each other favors, like making a case to keep a pal from getting fired, despite their differences. This, we inhabitants of planet Earth knew.

Sullivan, however, portrays it as some kind of devil's bargain between evil Democrats. Of course, he's not always so suspicious. The shoveling of unprecedented power to rich media conglomerates by their operatives in Congress, for example, glides right past him.

OUTLAND. Jeez, just got this forwarded by a friend:

Dear Friends and Neighbors,This morning at 5AM a man on a mountain bike rushed up behind one of my neighbors, took out a gun, and using the gun, forced him into his OWN apartment. The man with the gun took all the cash in his apartment, credit cards and other small valuables... The man was described as being 18-23 years old, African American, wearing a white cap, and--obviously--on a mountain bike. In the past month alone, there have been multiple crimes in our neighborhood. A stabbing on Maujer street, 2 gunpoint muggings on Powers Street and another mugging on Jackson St. It seems that the suspects are using the Graham Avenue community as their target--they are coming from the southside part of the street... All occurred during dark hours, but at weird times. So again, keep your eyes open. If you have to travel early in the morning or late at night alone, take a cab have a buddy watch for you...

The neighborhood described is considered part of Williamsburg -- my neighborhood, an alleged hipster Valhalla -- but newbies only started pushing as far west as the aforementioned streets recently. Other than this anecdotal evidence, I have no idea what's going out there. None of the local rags have decent police blotters. I guess they wouldn't be compatible with the current real estate values.

When I first lived in this neck of the neighborhood more than ten years ago, it was pretty dangerous, but things cooled out over time. For how long, I'm wondering.

AH, HA HA HA. AH, HA HA HA HA. Ah, ha ha ha.

DOESN'T PHOTOGRAPH WELL. Kathryn Jean Lopez complains at The Corner:

Ok. So maybe I am obsessed with the Clintons. I'll consider the possibility. But what about news editors who stick Ashcroft looking evil pictures wherever they can?

Here is the picture that thus exercised her:



I admit it wouldn't win the AG a lot of dates, but really, are there many better pictures of him out there? Maybe the photo editors are just making the best of a bad situation. Actively ranting, Ashcroft is at least dramatic; but when he tries to pose, watch out.
For instance, here's his official photo at DOJ:



One of his eyes looks bigger than the other, and though he's obviously trying to project warmth, he still reminds me of a cop who's had a slow week and has just seen a half-pound of weed fall out of your backpack. You know, the look that says, coolly and confidently, "You're mine, meat!" And that's his official photo.

And when he smiles -- brrrrr:



Sorry, K-Lo, the photo editors just don't have much to work with here.

STYLE COUNTS! I never thought I would say anything nice about The American Conservative's Taki, but age has either mellowed me, left me senile, or made me more appreciative of the aging playboy's prose style. NRO's David Frum, about whom I still cannot imagine saying anything nice, has accused Taki of rude advances toward his wife, and a remark about Jews getting all the pretty girls. Taki rebuts:

The idea that I would say what he claims I said to a perfect stranger is preposterous. I have been brought up to act like a gentleman of the old school, and although I am a heavy drinker and an incorrigible womanizer, I would no more dream of “hitting” on a woman I just met than I would betray my country for profit. (Drunk or sober, my manners do not vary. I am of the aristocratic school of thought about women. One never makes a lady feel anything but one, and by lady I mean anyone female.)

"And by a lady I mean anyone female." Like his forthright admissions about himself, this is bracingly clear and correct. Paternalistic, perhaps, but at least he recognizes that his paternalism requires of him some generosity and tact. In my experience, most men who think they have an old-fashioned view of women have instead merely a grudge against them. Given Frum's obssessive demonizing of Hillary Clinton, he is a perfect example of that sort, and he would do well (but is unlikely) to adopt Taki's example.

While the petulant Greek's manners are, too often for my taste, a thin veneer under which his noxious bigotry remains clearly visible, I must say that here, at least, he has acquitted himself with such high style that I must applaud him.

AT THIS WRITING, The last three posts at The Corner are about Barbara Walters, Hillary Clinton, and Oliver Stone. Who says conservatives have no interest in culture?

CLINTON'S PENIS: EVEN GAY CONSERVATIVES DREAM OF IT. You can, if you've the belly for it, read Andrew Sullivan's long snarl against Hillary Clinton, in which he characterizes Monica Lewinsky as Bill Clinton's "latest victim." (Victim of what, one might ask? Well, Sullivan does refer to the former President' "sexual abuse" as if this were a proven charge rather than a pleasing fantasy for conservatives still obssessed with Clinton's cock. And everyone knows that Lewinsky at the time of their affair was only 23 years old -- well below the legal age of consent in whatever alternate universe Sullivan inhabits.)

Or you could just go back in time and listen to how Sullivan feels his own sex life is none of your business.

ARTIFACT AND FICTION. PBS ran the old WWII weeper Since You Went Away tonight. It's a very sweet megaproduction in the old style. I note with interest that David O. Sleznick has a writing credit. His official screen bibliography is limited, but we know that even without a byline he had strong ideas about what went into the films he produced. Hitchcock told Truffaut that the Selznick wanted to punctuate the burning of Manderley in Rebecca with a large, smokey "R" floating above the ruins. (Hitchcock sensibly refused.)

Anyway the pic is a honey. Claudette Colbert's husband goes off to war, is reported missing in action, and CC must guide their budding daughters through heartbreak and mild domestic comedy. The acting is terrific in that big Forties manner that is incomprehensible, I know, to non-fans. (Bogart translates well across the ages because of the cold sweat of existential dread clinging to all his performances, but to youngsters raised on today's far less effusive players, most antique movie stars might as well be the wolf that does "To Be Or Not To Be" and gets hit with tomatoes in that old Warner Brothers cartoon.) The girls alternate between noble restraint and bouts of hysteria that are still raw and disturbing even on TV -- on the big screen they must have really bludgeoned open the lachrymal floodgates. Robert Walker is a doomed young soldier -- funny how the stink of death clung to Walker, even when he was very young and squeaky-voiced and well before he drank himself to death. Old family friends Joseph Cotten and Monty Woolley stop by from time to time to cut the estrogen miasma. Toward the end Cotten even makes some wise-ass professions of love to Colbert that are forcibly steered clear of any discomforting suggestion that either may be seriously considering a romance should the old man's death be confirmed (Cotten is especially good at this -- I searched his eyes during this scene, and he allowed not one flicker of subtext to escape from them).

I must add that at one point Monty Woolley quotes Wordsworth, aptly and without attribution -- not because Selznick wanted people to think he wrote it, I'm sure, but because it was part of the cultural life of the time and if you didn't get it, you should really make a better effort to keep up. Who would do that today? Why not?

John Cromwell does a nice company-man job of directing -- he manages some bravura touches, usually involving a key character with her back turned to the camera -- and generally keeps the train on track. But even to those of us predisposed to give ourselves over to the sentiments, it's hard not to be aware of the salesmanship involved. Despite the core truth of the thing -- that war is hell on the loved ones at home, and the only useful response is faith in the glorious resolution -- we know that despair and discontent are not absent, but merely fended off. A few years later, when all the living were returned to their homes, The Best Years of Our Lives would blow the whistle. Of course that, too, was a stalwart Hollywood product, but I wonder if Dana Andrews sitting in that disused cockpit didn't have as much to do with America's rude, postwar awakening from idealism as Brando on his motorcycle.

On one level, maybe the primary one, Since You Went Away is uplift, and hence propaganda, however kindly meant. Still I enjoyed it, was moved by it, and not only because the war in question was the last one to which I can give unqualified support. Don't tell anyone (I mean, who reads this, anyway) but every sneering and cynical impulse I have toward the manipulation of patriotism is shadowed by affection for the genuine article to which it refers, and the noble feelings it stirs, however shabby the pretenses. The fellow-feeling of American citizens, to the extent that it still exists, is beautiful and very human -- I wish it were still our birthright, and not a privilege granted upon favorable consideration of loyalty test results. Once upon a time it was possible even for artists to share in it, without having to announce or even have reservations and qualifications. I love "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and Young Mr. Lincoln and The Battle Hymn of the Republic. When George Bush lands on an aircraft carrier and talks about America, however, I want to throw up.

I came away from tonight's artifact of the old America grateful that even its memory exists, because to remember it is to hold hope, however tenuously, that it may again be realized. But, in the immortal words of Johnny Thunders, you can't put your arms around a memory.

A BRIEF RESPITE FROM INCOHERENT SNARLS. Boy that's some crabby posting I've been doing. Let us turn to happier subjects. There was a short break in the dismal weather that happily conincided with my bike-ride to the teaching job. The streets were nearly empty, the morning sun was cool and kind, and I had enough time to tool around Fort Greene and scope the pretty buildings around its park. Some of the older structures appear to be of wood, and a few have columned porticos. All the scene needed was a fat guy on a porch, sprawled in a rattan chair, shirt pure white, suspenders unsnapped, the cuffs of his pants riding up above the sock-line, cooling himself with a broad paper fan advertising CARSON'S FUNERAL HOME and havin' a Pepsi. Turn a corner, of course, and it's all gas stations and chicken joints. My City is so beautiful sometimes.

Last night I even had a satisfying experience at an art gallery. Pierogi 2000 has an installation by Brian Dewan, a recreated 50s-vintage elementary school classroom with authentic wooden desks, chalkboards, boxy PA speakers and clock, and American flag. Mark Newgarten showed period educational films, blessedly without comment, and Dewan ran a filmstrip of his own devising, a garbled fable concerning a hen and a rooster and their multispecied friends, artful and ludicrous and touching all at once. I could have stood a little more of this and a little less of that, but it's so rare nowadays when the art boys actually come across that I have to stand up and cheer. The exhibition and related shows run through the 23rd.

Coffee break over; everyone back on your heads!

WTF? Dunno how it'll be when you look in, but at the moment Blogger seems only to be showing my archives from March -- removing from public view thousands of words of deathless prose. I'll see what I can do to redress this offense against literature. Not much, I guessing.

UPDATE. All fixed. If this keeps up I may have to adopt some faith in humanity. Provisionally.

HIS OWN PETARD. Go look, if your breakfast has settled sufficiently, at the loathsome Lileks site, and read the Fark commentary he makes sport of, and read Lileks' crabby-suburban-dad commentary, and tell me, am I crazy -- well, nevermind, I am crazy ; substitute, am I wrong -- or is his argument (such as it is) feeble on its own terms? His target (a Canuck who did some actually reporting, as opposed to lengthy jeremiads interrupted by cute kiddy anecdotes, then went into PR, then took a pay cut to get back into the journalistic game) makes a lot more sense than he does. Lileks' case consists mainly of sneers. "All hail the 10,000 foot view!" he jibes. "From there everything looks so green and lovely. From this Olympian perspective, helping the homeless is more imporant than worrying about property taxes." Taken from the crabgrass POV, any attempt at perspective will of course seem ridiculous -- don't those Grubstreeters understand that I have a cute little girl to ferry around to malls, and that it's hard enough explaining my video games and Simpsons DVDs to her without having a filthy unemployed guy with a garbage bag on his head show up to blow my whole paternal trip?

How did we breed this hellspawn anyway? Are there nuclear reactors near Minneapolis? Or does the wind whistling through the wheat or corn or soybeanstalks or whatever the fuck they raise out there stir madness in their souls?

DIFFERENT TIMES.Well, they got Raines. His most noisome former employee, though ecstatic, insists the "battle isn't over." No, not till Sulzberger sells the New York Times to the noisome former employee's current boss.

With Joe "Whitewaterloo" Lelyveld stepping in, we can safely predict these developments at the paper:

• Seventeen-name bylines.
  
• An eight-month-long, front-page investigation of Hillary Clinton's book tour.
  
• Further resignations at the Sports desk when a reporter allegedly filing from Shea Stadium turns out to have actually watched the game on TV. (Suspicions will first be aroused when WB network reports a 25 percent ratings lift on the night of the game.)
  
• Guilty White Liberal Out; Gutless White Liberal In.
  
• Maureen Dowd still sucks.
  

COUPLA WHITE GUYS. Someone writes to The Corner to explain why affirmative action is bad for persons of the minority persuasion:

What I always wonder about is whether the "diversity" applicant gets all giddy because they have that singular requirement. "Woo hoo, I could get this job because I'm Black (or Asian, etc.)"! And when they get it, do they then wonder if that is indeed the reason? Can't say I'd feel too comfortable in that job...

Well, with black unemployment rates over 10 percent in the Bush economy, I'd say their comfort levels would be wobbly in any case. These days a lot of people need jobs, asshole, and needing a job is not the same as needing a haircut -- if you let it go, instead of looking mildly unfashionable, you'll look evicted and emaciated. If deliverance from impoverishment involved some kind of government get-over, I'm sure even an enlightened ofay such as yourself would avail it.

Elsewhere where the Kleagle soars, James "Get Down" Lileks sniffs contemptuously at a cartoonist's in-jokey shout-out to Aaron McGruder, author of world's-angriest-black-children strip The Boondocks: "One of the strips that made people’s eyes cross had a white character signing an angry letter 'Aryan McCracker, Whitesville USA.' Ho ho! I remember looking at that and feeling very, very tired. Turns out it was a little private joke with Aaron McGruder, who does Boondocks. Get it. Aryan McCracker, Aaron McGruder? Got it. But if you don’t know that, well, it kinda looks like Rastus Washington, Nigraville, or Kikie Yiddovich, Hymietown."

It makes one ashamed to have forgotten the long history of persecution white people have had to suffer. Aaron, apology to Jimmy this instant! And we will now watch a film to sensitize us to the plight of Jimmy's people. It's called 'Birth of a Nation.'"

To help keep white hope alive, make donations to either of these horrible sites, either at their Tip Jar, or at their Cracker Barrell.

(Deep breath.)

For the record, I am of Caucasian extraction. And I'm not into wiggerish poses and whatnot. But some outrages are so blind-deaf-and-dumbass that my inner Freedom Rider goes Hulkshit.

THE KIDS ARE, IN THE MAIN, ALRIGHT. Matthew Yglesias responds to Kevin Drum's posts (geez, maybe I should expand my circle of imaginary friends?) about whether or not The Kids Are Alright. They agree that they are, but MY points to unsettling data showing that most of us old farts think kids now are worse than ever.

No further linkage needed: I'll just break this down old-school, pro- and con- stylee:

Oldsters who think the kids are not alright are motivated to a large extent by jealousy. 'Twas ever thus, but kids today have it pretty damn sweet in terms of lifestyle choices. The sexual revolution is a settled issue (the libertines won). The odd Columbine aside, pursuance of an alternative lifestyle is free and easy to an extent not even imaginable to my generation. I see youngsters gothed-out, punked-out, prepped-out, and gay to the max, and while they may be crying bitter tears inside, I see little evidence that they're getting their asses kicked on a daily basis, which is what outre teens and preteens would have had to expect back in the day. (I speak only from a Blue State perspective; I expect in the Red Zone life goes pretty much as it did in the 19th century, only with SUVs and professional wrestling added.)

Plus they have wicked cool technology to play with. Tech is fine, even grown-ups like it, and these chillins is growing up at the zenith of its golden age.

Naturally any class of people observing a separate class that has it good where they had it bad would feel resentful, and most people of whatever age have a hard time recognizing that trait in themselves. So the default judgment for fossils is that the kids are irredeemably spoilt. Add to this tendency the number of naysayers who just don't approve of the lifestyles the youngers are free to avail, and you can easily explain the hostility now directed against them.

On the other hand: it is also true that the young are more poorly educated than their forebears, both by schools and by experience. They don't know much about history, which is to say they don't know much at all. And I'm constantly amazed by the sense of entitlement among young people of my acquaintance. Even if a good or a service was available to me as a kid, it was not a sure thing that I would be granted it, whereas it is today inconceivable that any family that can by any means afford it would deny their kinder cable, video games, rad clothes and accessories, etc.

This is not an indictment of the kids, but of the materialism of our age. There still seemed to be, in my youth, a general feeling that to overindulge the young materially was to do a disservice to them, whereas today none but bitter pundits take that tack (and I cannot believe that, if Bill O'Reilly has -- shudder -- spawned, his offspring are not more splendidly arrayed than Solomon in all the gadgetry and couture our civilization has to offer).

This does not make young people worse in themselves, but breeds in them a false understanding of causality. It is good for the young to expect love and respect as their due, because within their family units (and, if it is not totally fucked up -- and I'm not saying ours isn't -- their society), it damn well should be. But to expect the wealth of the earth as theirs by right is nuts. And the ahistoricism of the new breed, inbued by shitty schooling, removes from them any sense that human life is cyclical, that what goes up must come down, and that what they experienced today may not necessarily obtain tomorrow -- in other words, you can't always get what you want.

As the present oldsters (our wealthy and powerful avatars, anyway) lays axes to our economy, how will our juniors cope with the resulting diminishment of reasonable expectation? One shudders to think.

Finally, I call it a wash and vote in favor of the up-and-comers. I have two nephews, one entering college, another entering high school. They are great kids, and I defy anyone to tell me otherwise. And I'm amazed at the small-souledness of folks who actually have kids of their own (doesn't everyone, these days?) and still say theirs is a lousy generation.

WHAT'S RUNNING THROUGH MY HEAD. "Joe McCarthy's Ghost," The Minutemen. "Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," Bob Dylan. "The Groover," T Rex. "Pictures of Matchstick Men," The Status Quo. "Workin' Cheap," Waylon Jennings.

Sometimes in sequence, sometimes all at the same time.

Sometimes it's fun to have a rich inner life, especially if you can't afford an iPod.

A DOG'S BREAKFAST. In this morning's gibberish, endorsed by the Ole Perfesser, one Frederick Turner proposes that liberals (or is it boomers? Hard to tell here) are as "full of fear" as citizens under a Soviet tyranny, except the tyranny is not of the government but of their own wrong and evil ideas. Key words: Berkeley, new class, British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stalin's Moscow, Eustace Tilley. Words appearing in quotes: "scary," "going along," "coming out of the closet," "pukka," "The Big Chill." He also calls Michael Kinsley a George Bush supporter.

"It's not what you know, but who you know, so the greatest terror is to be shunned by the in-group," says the author of these knock-kneed nellies. "And this is where the fear comes from." Yes, far more brave to support the tiny, lonely voice of truth coming from the little-known and underfunded Republican Party.

While Turner is incomprehensible from the admittedly narrow perspective of common sense, he is clear as a bell to students of the particular kind of propaganda in which he deals. This specimen follows Storyline 1D: "Liberals are all nervous nellies with bad constitutions, like in "Mallard Fillmore," and conservatives are fearless seekers after truth." In this case, as frequently, Storyline 1B ("Liberals run everything and keep us down") is availed as a sub-theme. 1D and 1B would seem not very compatible with one another -- how did such abject weaklings take over a mighty nation? But these guys habitually ram them together nonetheless.

Personally I liked these guys better when they were bitching about Eisenhower and fluoride in the water.

MORE ON THE WATER ENGINE. Editor Downs is on the hydogren car case, and forwards this bit from Mother Jones, May-June 2003:

Using existing technology, hydrogen can be easily and cleanly extracted from water. Electricity generated by solar panels and wind turbines is used to split the water's hydrogen atoms from its oxygen atoms ... According to the administration's National Hydrogen Engergy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90 percent of all hydrogen will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels--in a process using energy generated by burning oil, coal, and natural gas. The remaining 10 percent will be cracked from water using nuclear energy.

A recent MIT study also points out that we're a long way from an emission-efficient method of producing a practical hydrogen car engine.

On the other hand, the Administration is talking about earmarking funds for hydrogen power research -- interestingly, "through partnerships with the private sector," not with spoilsports like MIT. So the current means of extracting hydrogen energy could be rendered moot. I'm not a science guy, to say the least, and don't know the state of the tech. I could spend some time with these guys and find out more, getting to the bottom of headlines like "Air Liquide Signs Hydrogren Contract with Chevron in the United States," but life is short. Our President talks out his ass about a lot of stuff, so I'm inclined to disbelieve him, but I suppose this could be an exception.

What I would like to know is what kind of mileage and speed this 1972 hydrogen car got. The government showed some interest in that project, too.

SPEAKING OF GENERAL CANARD #37: Andrew Sullivan goes on about how liberals who support affirmative action think black people are stupid. In support of this slur, he quotes one of his better-known fellow-nuisances:

Mickey Kaus once described those liberals who simply assume the permanent neediness of minorities as "Bell Curve Liberals," people who would never admit it but have internalized the notion that minorities are simply dumber than the majority.

That's an interesting term Sullivan is appropriating, seeing as he's always been a big booster of the grotesque, race-baiting "Bell Curve." His official bio proudly states that, as editor of The New Republic, Sullivan " stirred controversy with... the first publication of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve..." And every once in a while he hauls the book out in support of himself, e.g., "The convergence of a global economy, a technological surge, and a meritocratic education system have all contributed to an inexorable and irreversible transition to greater inequality. his was the point most memorably made in Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's much-maligned and misunderstood book, 'The Bell Curve.'"

Let's see. Sullivan likes "The Bell Curve," yet explicitly associates it with "people who... have internalized the notion that minorities are simply dumber than the majority." What do you suppose he's trying to tell us?

I HATE POP-UPS SO MUCH that this is what I'm gonna do:

• Never patronize another credit-card company, discount travel agent, or boner-pill merchant of any kind, ever.
  
  
• If I do ever patronize any such businesses, in the part of the application where they ask where I'd heard about their services, I'll write, "I counted all the pop-ups according to industry and found yours had the fewest pop-ups per user of all comparably-priced boner pill merchants."
  
  
• If I find out who invented this shit, I will make a brittle and humorous statement about them in my weblog, which is read my millions of my imaginary friends.
  

End emission.

THIS MORNING'S WADE THROUGH THE FEVER SWAMP. The Ole Perfesser has a long'un about Iraq etc. Unlike those evil bastards at the Times he's always harshing on, the Perfesser does primary research: "My waitress at dinner was a Kurd, who reported that relatives in Northern Iraq (she hadn't been back for a couple of years) say that things are much better since Saddam's fall." Indeed. Heh. More butter over here.

He also recycles General Canard #37 -- that liberals are really condescending to the people about whom they claim to care. "We want a peaceful, free and prosperous Iraq," forthrightly states the Perfesser. "Claims that Arabs are somehow incapable of that sort of thing seem a bit dubious to me, especially when they come from people who call themselves 'progressive.'" Then, elsewhere in the same article, he talks about the Arabs as if they were retarded children. "As Osama says, people (especially Arab people) tend to want to back a strong horse," he quoth. "So it's important to look strong." And get a whiff of this:

Both Iraq and Israel are currently tests for the Arabs. If they can't achieve a reasonable degree of peace and freedom here, if they sink back into theocracy and thuggery, then it's going to be easy for the rest of the world to give up on them -- as the "progressives" already have -- and say "what can you expect from the wogs?" as it turns a blind eye to another generation of dictators' brutality.

I'll admit he's crafty -- by dropping that "as the 'progressives' already have" in the middle, he draws careless readers away from the clear implication that we may righteously consider Arabs to be shiftless wogs if they don't do like we tell them to. Crafty, however, is not the same thing as right, or even coherent.

POGO MEETS PEANUTS AT A RAVE. Click through some episodes of this comic strip. It's hot, young, and underdiscovered. When you read about it in Vice this summer and have yet to stake your cred, don't come bitching to me.

P.S. Don't tell Perfesser Reynolds -- it'll just upset him.

JACK'S CASE. My dear old friend Eva, who reviews theatre for Public Access Cable, invited me to see, on her comps, the Joyce Johnson play "Door Wide Open" at the Bowery Poetry Project, based on Johnson's letters to and from Jack Kerouac. Eva seemed to think I'd be into it.She remembered that as a young'un I had been enamored of On The Road and The Dharma Bums. I had, of course. But then I graduated college, and after availing deepest bohemia for a seeming eternity or two myself, for a long time I failed to see what was so hot about him, my memory of his prose being poisoned by the shabby streams of consciousness his example had unloosed among the zillion latter-day, junior-league Jacks by whom I was surrounded.

I was in a mildly more receptive mood tonight. A few months ago I caught Pull My Daisy on PBS, and through that tiny window took a fresh look at the Beats. Ginsberg I could never forsake. The loopy grandeur of his poems, with their little towers of Naropa and Newark and Lower East Side bric-a-brac building bravely toward heaven, touches me still. And I recall a reading he gave in Tompkins Square Park, at the height of The Troubles in the late 1980s, where he threw back at the kids that idolized him the epithet Die Yuppie Scum: "Look at me. I'm wearing a tie. Am I a Yuppie?" All class, that guy.

Kerouac in the film interested me afresh. He had a blundering presence, especially beside the epicene Larry Rivers. Listening to his voice-over, I could not get over the feeling that he was putting us on. He sounded too much like Fred Ward in Henry & June, playing the regular-guy Ahtist touched by Da Muse. What was this guy really about? I would have looked at his books again if I'd had them. Did he really have something, or was he the dress-down equivalent of Chum Frink in "Babbitt," selling the old "spill-o'-speech" to a more rockin' crowd?

The play at its start made me anxious, and I was glad that tight seating forced us to the bar, where I could drink Bourbon and lean my head wearily on my fist. The thing was done as a reading, with a younger and an older Joyce Johnson stand-in off to one side while a young man, who in speech and manner resembled George Clooney doing Frank Sinatra, read the Jack bits. Jack as an up-and-comer and Joyce as an up-and-come-into were boring as hell. I liked Amy Wright as older Joyce (I had seen her several times off-Broadway years ago, and to now witness her once-gawky stage presence softened and made elegant by age sold me the memory-play angle), but the two young players projected no electricity past their lecterns. Worse, the pacing was flat and the lighting somnambulizing, and the Kerouac epistles fell like marijuana-scented mash notes to the stage. I loved the music by David Amram -- yes, that David Amram, whose accompaniment on piano, gourds, and flutes was beautiful throughout -- but my heart sank when I noticed that there would be two acts.

But toward the end of the first act, around the time "On the Road" took off, things got better. Jack loosened up -- only to fall apart, as the play/recollection would have it, but the Jack-actor became more vivid, more human, and the words, as written and as read, began to make sense. As an author of love-scribbles Kerouac had been tiresome; as a drowning poetry star trying to explain himself out of his self-sprung trap, he was electric. And the young Joyce, lashing back at last at her ill-treatment and playing less the lovestruck executive secretary, showed some life as well. The second act was even better, notwithstanding a maudlin coda.

Afterwards I thought, isn't it odd that the young, confident lovers were boring, but the embittered, conflicted fellow-travelers following the caravan of Beat unto its apocalypse were interesting? But no, no it isn't. We appreciate, or claim to, the life-affirming sweep of the Beats, and of course their big "yes" is very exciting and supplies some sparks -- but what became of the tinder to which those sparks was set is more interesting, at least when you've achieved an age greater than that of the young post-Beatniks gathered at the Bowery Poetry Project to witness this evening's event. "Yes" gets you to the door of life, but once you pass through there are a thousand wet blankets waiting to descend upon you, and you have to come up with a more nuanced strategy to keep going -- especially if you want to keep that little spark of "yes" alight. Kerouac, after some entertaining struggles, went home to live with his mom. I won't say that Joyce Johnson's mordant postscripts are as inspiring, or even as valuable, as Kerouac's death-plunge. Yet her careful reflection of his glory finally made Kerouac real to me again.

Was his failure preordained or preventable? Older Joyce makes a comment about this in the play. In Kerouac's case, I think the point is moot -- unless you want to believe that a rage to live is nothing but a folly to be avoided, and I'm not prepared to go all the way down that bleak alley -- not yet, anyway. Is Jack's case less edifying than those of great novelists who negotiated their way through a thousand disappointments and ended with some calm and quiet in old age? Well, what cases would those be, in America? Twain? He died raging. Hemingway? Blew his head off. Fitzgerald? Dead, drunk. Washington Irving, James Fennimore Cooper? I like those guys, but given the farther shores our literature has managed to reach via the aforementioned parties (and many left unmentioned), Irving and Cooper might as well have never gotten out of the blocks.

A lot to chew on there, and quite some time to pass before it's digested. I will say that Kerouac is more impressive to me now than when I walked into that theatre. As is anyone who tries anything like what he was trying. Assuming, perhaps unfairly, that there is anyone.

LILEKS ON WOMEN:

"Tonight we blame a friend of my wife's, a charming lass -- no, she's not a lass. Nor is she a colleen, a frail, a skirt, a broad, a womyn, a twist, or any other synonym. Nor is she a gal. 'Person' doesn't do the job -- please. When we're all shave-skulled automatons in white jumpsuits we will all be Persons. Not until. We really need a new gender-specific word for people who come over to pick up something, stay for two hours chatting with your wife and delighting your child, leave you with a stack of reading material, and listen to you expand on the politics of David Lynch on the way down the stairs."

One word? How about "woman"? (Or, if we have room for a few modifiers, "terrified woman buttonholed by lunatic while trying to escape friend's house"?)

James Lileks -- a man's madman!

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH. "San Francisco Fed Chief Says Vegas Economy Performing Well" -- Las Vegas Sun. Seven come eleven, snake eyes watching you.

THROUGH BEING COOL. Over at The Corner they're still talking about young conservatives, and posting their missives, in which the Tory tykes tell how hip they are. Sample: "By the way, I was a skateboarder for most of my life. I never wore a blue blazer. It was all of my rich girlfriends, who were extreme lefties, that belonged to the Country Club." Rawk on, dude!

Their obsession is understandable. This conservative redoubt, chaired by Jonah "Check out my Simpsons references" Goldberg, is increasingly devoted to redefining Cool in its favor. And why not? They have the country's politics in a headlock, and so have leisure to worry about whether the kids think they're alright.

Let 'em. Youth culture (see entry below) is wholly manipulated and corrupt, and it hardly matters by what guerilla marketing channels the underaged are approached. Truth and bullshit can each be as easily dressed in rad gear. A fixation with fashion is appropriate for posers, though unsuitable to higher minds.

One's experiences teach the lessons that form one's politics. So long as suburbanites devoid of any higher interest than cheaper gas for their SUVs and lower rates for their second mortgages comprise the bulk of the electorate, it is these concerns that will determine our future course. Bush is manipulating both these aforementioned factors to his advantage, and his triumph or defeat will rest on the persistence of their success unto the next electorial showdown. Our politics then are guided not by great issues but by the cynical calculations of well-placed spinmeisters.

How cool is that?

MUSCLEBOUND INDIE ROCKER SPEAKS TRUTH. A friend forwarded an excerpt from a Henry Rollins interview, taken by Michael Dean for a book he's working on and which will no doubt be worth reading, as is this Rollins fragment:

To do what you want to do, you have to be very tough. Especially in this day and age. Not tough like being insensitive, you have to be tough like Miles Davis who protected his art. He was very protective of that thing that he had, he was like a swan -- it's this very graceful creature but if you mess with it, it gets very pugnacious...

I think these days a lot of bands who do their first tour on a Privo bus with shiny new gear are missing out on a lot of things that will keep them in the game after the blush is off the rose. Because you never maintain your popularity -- everyone has an arc. Or ebbs and flows. Guys like Neil Young, they just keep making records and it's never like an up or down thing, it's like a high-tide, low-tide thing. He's just going to keep making records whether you buy them or not. Neil Young makes records. That's what he does... And those bands that were hydrogrown through the Clear Channel thing, they have no roots to the ground so when push comes to shove, they have no anchor.

I used to think Rollins was kind of silly, but these are not the words of a silly man.

SEE YA LATER, BOI. Matthew Yglesias is delighted that Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" will soon be a major motion picture. He loves Avril, and there I let him alone; de gustibus non disputandum est. But I have a couple of preemptive peeves against the picture.

First, there's the song. A nice piece of radio fluff, but what kind of movie will it make? A stuck-up girl (did ballet, dontcha know) turns down a boy in baggy pants, and winds up a single mom while the eponymous poser becomes a superstar, slammin' on his guitar. My sympathy is with the girl, of course, and I think it's a little creepy that the most noteworthy thing about the boi is that he's popular and rich. Doesn't anyone believe anymore that a heart can broken by anything other than a missed seat on a gravy train?

What seems like more of a problem is the pictoralization of a pop tune. It's rare enough to get that right in a video, let alone a 90 minute feature. I recall the video of the Kinks' "Come Dancin'." A nice tune, and the video has some nice bits, but one scene forever embodies the tendency of filmmakers to crush the life out of a good musical moment. In the bridge of the song, when the "Palais" that was the arena of the older brother's teenage romance, is no more ("The day that they tore down the Palais/my brother broke down and cried"), there's a nice Davies Brothers moment -- Ray sounds sad, and Dave smashes out power chords. It suggests sorrow, futility, and rage. In the video, we see at that moment the younger brother jumping gleefully on his bed, thrashing air-guitar on his tennis racket. It's rhythmically correct, but runs so contrary to the musical moment as to take all the meaning out of it.

When "Sk8er Boi" is all done up nice and Hollywood with James van der Beek and Hillary Duff, or whomever, can we really expect any better?

A NUCLEAR ERA, BUT I HAVE NO FEAR. Way back during the last State of the Union address, the President promised a billion-and-change to develop "hydrogen fuel technologies" that would lead -- here comes the concrete example beloved of speechwriters -- to the development of "clean, hydrogen powered automobiles." This was, as reported by Environmental News Services, the first mention by Bush in a SOTU of environmental issues.

I thought at the time it was a feint, in the midst of a war-ginning speech, to show that he was not all about blood and thunder. (As to the money, well, recent developments demonstrate that Bush is awful free with a public buck.) But it's beginning to dawn on me that the President had a larger agenda.

Pete Domenici (R, NM, and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee) is promoting a bill to revive the nation's moribund nuclear energy industry. You may, or may not, remember the "No Nukes" movement of a couple decades ago that effectively shut down the proliferation of nuclear plants, partly by convincing insurers to charge sky-high rates on such facilities. Well, Domenici's bill would lower that hurdle by limiting the nuke-makers' liability, and even partially funding the development of plants with taxpayer money.

It is to be remembered that the hydrogen for the Bush car would almost certainly come from nuclear reactors.

Here's where the environmental angle comes into play. There is a lingering fear among sentient humans of nuclear plants leaking radioactive waste, blowing up, and generally Chernobyling. The Republicans are countering the anti-nuclear meme with one more current and cheerful: the promise of decreased reliance on petroleum. As the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) nicely puts it:

In this false future, the nuclear power industry becomes an environmental savior... unless checked, the nuclear power industry will receive "clean air" credits under both state and federal legislation, which will help bolster its unbalanced books. It will produce hydrogen for clean vehicles, while producing more tons of radioactive waste with no viable disposal method...

You can read the White House's case for its "Freedom Fuel" initiative pretty much intact at Science Blog. NIRS is good on the counter-argument, as is this recent Village Voice article, which states that "Scientists have not yet designed a nuclear facility whose safety and efficiency trumps that of gas or coal."

Of course, that puts the anti-nuclear crowd in the position of arguing, however indirectly and unwillingly, for gas and coal, and we all know how dirty they are. That's worth a billion-plus in PR right there -- especially when you consider that select Friends of W will benefit from nuclear power protections. Cynicism, the ever-reliable Virgil in the Inferno of contemporary politics, suggests that the transfer of profits from Halliburton's fossil fuel cost centers to its nuclear ones will be fairly seamless.

I'm still trying to figure how the other touchy-feely talking point of the 2003 SOTU, AIDS in Africa, makes money for Bush backers while softening his image, but I imagine an answer will come soon enough.

CHUM FRINK. As a professional writer who has labored long in corporate vineyards, I have a special affection for, and identification with, T. Cholmondeley (Chum) Frink, the repulsive PR/ad man in Sinclair Lewis' "Babbitt." Frink, wrote Lewis,

was not only the author of "Poemulations," which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of "Ads that Add." Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses, they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve...

Of course Frink is revealed in the end to be a self-loathing drunk.

So I am delighted to find that there is a prog-rock group called Chum Frink, and especially delighted that nowhere on their web site do they explain their name. Such restraint in the world of rock is rare and admirable.

CONTEMPT FOR THE PUNTER. I'm not the only ranter around who thinks his own bad customer service experiences are worth reading. Patrick Hayden is angry at his high-speed access provider, Speakeasy, for ripping him off. I'm not surprised. As recounted here, I got fucked over by NorthPoint (Outta business! See ya!) and Verizon (Service doesn't really work with Macs and screws up your operating system and mail agent! See ya!), in ways that were slightly different from those described by Hayden but fundamentally similar in that they reflect a growing trend of what I'll call contempt for the punter.

To reiterate, so many service companies make their long green from big clients that they don't think much about customer satisfaction down at the sub-millionaire end of the demo. Like a lot of things businessmen don't really care about, they respond to perceived problems in that area by sprinking some money and programs in places where trade magazine reporters might notice them, all the while leaving the basic problem -- systems designed to extract maximum money with minimum customer benefit -- untouched.

The "We don't use last names" response Hayden got from Speakeasy's rep is hilarious. And I expect that, should that piece of shit company remain in business (or become a wholly-owned part of some mega-corporation, as I suspect its owners are hoping), they will eventually institute a CRM program meant to address the problem -- meaning the customers' reps will give out last names, and lots of soothing baby-talk, but no better service.

As it happens, JP Morgan Chase appears to have fixed the problem they caused for me the other day. I say "appears" because in my discussions with them they left themselves enough rhetorical wiggle room to leave me on edge as to whether this problem is fixed for good, for a day, or what.

YOU'VE GOT QUESTIONS, WE'VE GOT ANSWERS. "SO WHY DO I CARE ABOUT THE NEW YORK TIMES STORY?" Because the movement for which you are an operative has always had it in for the Times, and the Blair mess (and the attendant Bragg pseudo-scandal) provides the proverbial shit that brings the proverbial happiness to the proverbial pig. "So why do many people consider [newspapers] more reliable than blogs?" I guess it will be a year or two before the average American is so stupid that he can't tell the difference between a major newsgathering organization with bureaus all over the world and deskbound link-peddlers with catchphrases, so I'll save my explanation for then.

CURSE CONT. These days I find it a lot easier to get spitting mad at institutions than at politicians, even. Chase's unhelpfulness mirrors a pattern I've found in many utilities and services. People complain and complain about customer service, and the companies dump billions into CRM and related training and technologies as a "response" to these complaints. They also drill into into their reps' heads that customer service is important, which mainly translates to some increased touchy-feeliness in their scripts -- how often have you heard a rep assure you that it is his or her goal to provide you with "outstanding" (or "excellent") service?

But there's not a lot the reps can do, because it is too often in the interest of the institutions themselves to prevent you from getting what you need.

Think about free-magazine deals. Once you've taken the free magazine, the company has a vested interest in keeping you from cancelling the automatic subscription that's supposed to kick in sometime afterward. They'll put you on hold forever, lose your trouble ticket, offer you some other premium -- whatever it takes to keep you from registering a final and irrefutable cancellation. Suddenly the nice people who gave you a free magazine turn into greedhead sharks.

With big companies it's subtler. First off, you're usually over a barrel: you need a key service rendered, and your only leverage is a threat is to pull your business. But what if they don't care? What if their income mostly derives from much bigger clients -- and an eternally-replenished pool of little fish like yourself? You can go on and pull out -- and endure the massive hassle of transferring providers (usually with fat fees tied on the end). Or you can stand and fight -- and realize that, however many assurances you get that the rep is doing all he or she can, the system is hard-wired to give you as little as it can get away with.

Jules Feiffer had a gag years ago about trouble with the phone company: "You can always take your business to one of our many competitors." Ma Bell was a monopoly then. Well, today we have phone companies out the ass -- and they all act more or less the same. They'll offer you free minutes, hours, cell phones, anything -- and when the going gets tough they'll stonewall you and dare you to fall off the vine, because who needs your piddleyshit patronage when their major scrilla is coming from giant corporate accounts and their own endless mergers and acquisitions?

There are all kinds of good arguments against the consolidation of everything, but the best one I know is that it leaves increasingly fewer vendors with any vested interest in the satisfaction of us peons. When everything on earth is owned by Gog and Magog, try getting an extra phone line put in before September.

They'll probably instruct their agents to break out the phone sex ("Welcome to Magog! It's my goal today to make you cum all over my tits!"), but in the end you still won't get your money shot.

A CURSE. My bank has fucked me up in a major way with an EFT transfer. My bank offers no explanation, and no remedy, for its malfeasance. My bank is JP Morgan Chase, and a more repulsive flock of usurious vultures, with a lower regard for all but its most affluent customers, has never been witnessed. A black curse on their filthy heads.

UPDATE. Chase "made good," as they say, but I'm waiting to see if the effects are permanent before lifting the curse. I will, however, keep my bone rattle and vial of goat's blood handy, just in case.

THE LIMITS OF UTILITARIANISM. At the New York Post this weekend (can't be troubled to find the link -- every access of the Post's files unleashes a reek, and I can't bear it today), author Eric Schlosser talks about his new book, "Reefer Madness," which considers the nuttiness of the drug war.

At one point he brings up the strain drug convictions put on the prison system, and the resulting overcrowding and inhuman conditions.

"Why should we care?" asks the interviewer.

Schlosser makes the perfectly reasonable answer that prisoners thus treated present, when released, an even more intractable problem for the general population than before.

Call me a dreamer, but it would have been nice if Schlosser had responded along these lines: "You should care because you're a human being, asshole."

IT NEVER RAINS IN CALIFORNIA, BUT GIRL, DON'T THEY WARN YA... Kevin Drum is having trouble sleeping and is depressed. I have hectored some web characters about this sort of thing in the past, but Drum is a True Son of Liberty and so I write to offer comfort rather than causticism. That's how rabidly partisan I am.

The news is making Drum unhappy, it seems, not personal, professional, or economic pressures. So my first counsel is perspective. On the latter three counts, I myself regularly hit the trifecta of misery, so for me our parlous political situation is just one damned thing after several others. If he has mental leisure to be depressed about the gang of nuts and sleazebags running our country, he might take that a favorable sign.

There are any number of far wealthier, far more comfortable, and far more highly-placed folk out there who, deprived of any sane reason for singing the blues, fret over the state of European architecture, or of their subjects' lungs. Fortunately Drum has good sense to accompany his penchant for melancholy, and he may take comfort that his expressions of concern are found by enlightened correspondents such as myself to be based in some sort of reality, not in the vaporous nightmares of our latter-day Ludwigs.

Should the strain of seeing plain the depradations of our time become too much for him, he may wish to avoid the news altogether for a small space. I evaded newsprint for most of the Carter Administration and part of Reagan's, to good personal effect, before my restless curiosity overrode my instinct for self-preservation. We would miss his sensible observations of the current scene, but he could just post cat pictures in the interim. Everyone likes kitties -- everyone with any sense, anyway.

Above all, Drum must keep at arm's length any sense of mission. We do what we do because something drives us, but that something is usually either decreased seratonin levels or the gift of gab, not a charge from God. Only the Blues Brothers could accept such a mission with happy results.

When all else fails, devolve into madness. Works for me!

Get well soon, Calpundit.

UPDATE: Now he says he's feeling better. From the yawning pit of hell, I salute him. Now get out there and counter some absurdities!

THE STORY GOES AWAY. Matthew Yglesias points to Josh Marshall, who says the below mentioned DeLay issue is journalistically moot because it's a dog-bites-man story -- DeLay is a notoriously "hardball" type of operative, so no one finds it surprising (or, by that narrow defintion, newsworthy) that he may have misused the resources of a Federal agency in pursuit of a partisan vendetta. Marshall also says that "it's not simply a partisan or bias issue," though I seem to recall an ocean of ink devoted to allegations that Bill Clinton had his operatives shut down LAX so he could get a $200 haircut.

Marshall also brings up the in-some-ways-similar example of Trent Lott, which is all the segue fodder I need. "At least in the first few days, no one gave the Lott situation much attention because pretty much everyone knew that Lott was fairly unreconstructed on racial issues," says Marshall. "(After all, only three years before, his close ties to a white-supremacist group had been widely reported in the Washington Post and other papers.) So it really wasn't such a surprise that he thought this way."

This seems to go against Marshall's point rather than for it, and maybe he's suggesting that the DeLay case, like Lott's, may catch-a-fire over time.

I doubt that. As I wrote copiously about the Lott takedown, Crimson cons/and doves of teel/worked together to cut the Trent Lott deal because each side got something out of it. The liberals got to pile on a noisome conservative, and the conservatives got to show that they do too hate prejudice, so there.

While there are a few conservatives out there in the electronic hustings who view askance the whole Homeland Security trip, I don't see enough percentage for them in a Lott-style takedown of DeLay to motivate a show of outrage.

Blogospheric pressure is thus weakened, and absent, as shown, Big Media interest in the case, the story goes away.

This is a profoundly cyncial analysis, but these days, in so many cases, those are the only kind that make sense.

DELAW'S DELAY, THE INSOLENCE OF OFFICE. MSNBC pokes light fun at Tom DeLay for saying kaddish at a memorial for a Challenger crew member of the Jewish persuasion. Tee-hee -- super-Christian Tom speaks Hebrew!

To be fair, a slightly more substantive discourse follows about the role of evangelicals in the Israel-Palestine road map thing. All very edifying, in an official-wisdom sort of way, but what shocked me was that no mention was made of a large crime in which the powerful Christer seems to be involved -- namely, involving the Federal Department of Homeland Security in the pursuit of Democratic Texas House members, and the destruction of public records pertaining thereunto.

There are all kinds of ways to parse this, in a "What Liberal Media?" kinda way, but I'm focusing mainly on the "Hella Dumb Media" aspect. DeLay is like Michael Jackson to them. We tag Jackson, these days, for one thing: being a freak who likes little boys. There's more to him than that, for good or ill -- I think his recent bankruptcy claims are pretty interesting, especially considering the convoluted economics of the music business -- but when the editors and producers are lining up their programs, little boys are what Jackson's all about, and anything else would, in their view, muddy up the story.

For MSNBC, DeLay is Mr. Jesus Redneck, and there's a lot to that, but it's downright weird to me that any late-breaking story involving him would totally eschew the Homeland Security angle. I seem to recall that coverage of everything former NJ Senator Bob Torricelli did in recent months mentioned his "allegations of ethical breaches" -- in fact, when he was recently appointed special master of a Honeywell chromium cleanup, ETL (Even The Liberal) Newsday saw fit to bring them up long, long after they were a public issue.

What's up with that? Is any mention of Republican crookedness in states run (formerly or presently) by Bushes automatically downplayed by our (cough, cough) liberal media?

DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE, BLOGGING ABOUT POLITICS. Neil Young mouths off about Bush in the Guardian (link found via Atrios), which collaboration will make him subject to Vidal/Mailer/Vonnegut treatment in Right-Wing World soon enough, I'm guessing.

The Brit interlocutor says that Young "has never been a political songwriter, unless you count his 1970 hit single Ohio." At first this seems absurd. Hello? "Southern Man"? "Alabama"? "Rockin' in the Free World" (and the rest of the Freedom album? The long rants in Journey Through The Past ("They think they're Roman Senators... and they're full of shit!")?

But maybe the Brit is right on another level. The line between the personal and the political in Young's stuff has often been very porous, but that doesn't make him much of an advocate. He's a crank with several bees in his bonnet, and every so often his personal grudges line up with political ones in an almost accidental way. Sometimes it's a Safeway cart or a Coupe de Ville that tickles his muse, sometimes it's George Bush.

That's why his politics, such as they are, don't follow a steady trend-line. He did defend Reagan, but that doesn't seem to have been a political statement in anything but appearance. "I don't know Ronald Reagan," he said in an interview, "but I have this feeling about him that this is a personal thing... It pisses me off to have anybody ALWAYS attacking, always putting down the leaders. My brother does the same thing."

This makes him a flake to some people who want things predictable -- like David Geffen, who sued him for his stylistic flip-flops, to use a favorite word of political observers, on records like "Trans" and "Everybody's Rockin." I saw Young during that period -- he kept crossing up the buckskinned fans at the Coliseum by playing electonic music between renditions of songs from Harvest, and they all started filing out of the place when he launched into his rockabilly set. I don't doubt Neil Young loves his fans, but he's obviously too committed to going his own way to allow that love to keep him in one place very long. That may be why so many of his songs are about travelling, and about lost love.

Political writing, of the sort we often attempt on these pages, is best when the terms are clear and the facts are straight. So it's usually a little embarrassing when artists interject themselves into that world, because their thinking is a little too free-range. But so what? No one with any sense will rely on even the most astute political art-makers for a convincing argument -- if I quote Brecht to you in defense of the labor movement, that's a filigree, not a proof point. From artists you might get images, metaphors, and turns of phrase that effect the way you think and feel about the world. And that may sustain and inspire you when you argue, under whatever debating society rules you choose to accept, about politics.

It's not bad to be reminded that behind all the online arguments are a bunch of people who go to movies, listen to songs, may have missed a car payment or lost a loved one or had a few cross words with God. That neither invalidates nor bolsters any particular argument, but it may remind us that the endlessly scrolling texts and talking points are not all our correspondents comprise, and instill in us a little merciful perspective.

Now to work up another bellyful of bile for the next fool I come across in my obssessive blogreading!

Or maybe not.

THIS JUST IN: ASSISTANT CONTRIBUTES CONTENT TO CEO MEMO! WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? Andrew Sullivan continues jihad against his former employers, making a mountainous molehill out of a Times story reported from the Florida Gulf Coast. Turns out the bylined author relied on reporting from a freelancer, but didn't acknowledge it.

In terms of inside baseball, this is maybe a big deal, and the reporter should be censured. But the point is, someone did make the scene and take the notes -- the story would appear to be sound, though the attribution isn't.

The Blair scandal was about making shit up and publishing it as observed reality. Whether a name was left of the credits is not nearly so big a deal -- it sucks for the freelancer, sure, but freelancers get screwed all the time, as boy don't I know. Does it change your perception of the story that the reporter had unaccredited help?

Sullivan's been looking to get back at Raines for a while, and it would be churlish to deny him the golden opportunity presented by the Blair case. Still, I'm getting a little sick of it. It's a good thing that people are paying attention, but Sullivan and the rest of his crew seem a lot less interested in getting the Times to maintain its high journalistic standards than in discrediting it.

When the Times starts running the kind of crap Deborah Orin regularly vomits up onto the "news" pages of the New York Post, I'll worry about it, but till then it's a non-story to me.

A GOOD NIGHT. The Mets pulled out a one-run victory over the Braves tonight. Art Howe may be starting to earn his salary. He played a lot of pitchers tonight, and pulled them each at the right time, including the starter, Trachsel. Weathers put in a particularly gutsy performance in the eighth. And Benitez gave a great show in the ninth, balking to push a Brave into scoring position and nodding in acknowledgment of his transgression, instead of blowing smoke out of his ears like he usually does in tough spots. Shinjo saved the game by throwing out the balk-advanced runner at the plate -- boy, it's good to have him back. Howe grabbed a smiling Benitez afterwards and gleefully shouted something at him -- something along the lines of, "You'll take it, right?" I'm guessing. Bobby V probably would have made Benitez do laps or something.

I believe this was the Mets' first game of the season against Atlanta. Last year the Braves regularly mopped the floor with the Amazin's, but this game didn't look like a fluke at all. That fat lady hasn't even cleared her throat.