JUST A TASTE FOR NOW. There's a lot to deconstruct in the latest batshit burble from the Crazy Jesus Lady, and I'm sure others are hard on the case, but for now I just want to point this one lovely orgasmlet from her paen to George W.:

George W. Bush didn't grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else.

Yeah, that's what made ol' W the Man of the People he is today: those crucial, formative pre-boarding-school years.

THIN AS A FLOPHOUSE BLANKET. It's time someone said it: The closer we get to the election, the more obvious it becomes that Professor Reynolds is a straight-up Republican operative.

Not that he doesn't try, however feebly, to cover. Witness his behavior when employing the latest GOP memes, which he always has factory-fresh on his shelves. Note how he uses the "People keep sending me this" dodge before going into a long, luxuriant description of the tainted and irrelevant Cong-quoted-Kerry dirtbomb. And after yet another lame attempt to drag the mouldering corpse of the Kerry intern story out into the spotlight, observe that he hastily changes the subject -- to "Bush-hatred." ("And speaking of such things, I highly recommend this article by University of Texas law professor Doug Laycock...")

Yes, there's always somebody else onto whom the Prof can deflect attention and responsibility -- like this Rush-in-training who told the Professor, John Kerry and the Viet Cong made a baby and I saw the baby and the baby looked at me! (to which the Professor replied, "Looked at you, eh?" and posted the tawdry tale). But the cover is increasingly flimsy. No one could read a full page of Reynolds and fail to get where he's coming from.

Yet he keeps pretending. Even now, on the very same page at which you can see all the aforementioned disinfo (and the usual Bush-War encomiums), the Professor claims he doesn't understand why people call him a conservative.

On the odd chance that one of the Professor's handlers reads this (hey, it's not impossible -- maybe an ambitious young turk is scanning the most out-of-the-way sources for fresh angles, to get in good with his boss), I have to say: I understand "deep cover," but I don't get shallow cover -- and in this case, Reynolds' cover is as thin as a flophouse blanket. Why are you guys even pretending?

Seriously, this whole kitbag of tactics -- the eventheliberal tactic, the as-a-lifelong-Democrat ruse, and the "Sigh, some Democrat come and save me" (or Lieberman) maneuver -- is absolutely played. It fools no one. Why not bring Reynolds in from the cold? You can spend the saved resources on something really important, like programming veterans to testify that Kerry came to the Hanoi Hilton to torture them in 1971.

LISTEN TO THE WARM. "I'm quite a synesthetist myself, experiencing sound in visual terms. (Based on my experience, this is true of most sound engineers, and many musicians). The sound of falling rain 'looks' like polkadots. A kick drum hit looks kind of like an overstuffed pillow, with the shape and size varying according to tone. Electric guitars look like multicolored spaghetti.... I suspect that this is actually useful, allowing more brain processing power to go to work on a problem." -- Instapundit, who fails to add that he's a wow at parties and great in the sack, and looks good in his Johnny Carson Collection threads, but sounds like he'll get to it at any moment.

Multicolored spaghetti?

LYING LESSONS. While neither as skilled nor as noble as the great rhetoricians of old, our present-day political columnists (or Party operatives DBA political columnists) can still teach us much. In fact, the pathetic simplicity and transparency of their tactics makes it easier for us to see how the gears move in their attempted word-bombs, and so we may regard them as medical students regard cadavers: noxious, even nauseating, but capable of giving instruction.

One such stiff is Brendan Miniter. In a recent column he compared Bush with Lincoln -- favorably, yet. Right off the bat, that's a neat trick: an encomium so outrageously inapposite, bordering on sacrilege against both Lincoln and common sense, that by the time dissenters have recuperated from their shock, the piece is over.

But there is one specific passage here that could furnish a textbook:

Fighting terrorism, however, is increasingly dividing this country -- and not always along party lines. There are two distinctive camps developing. One comprised of Americans who don't think the war is something that should touch their everyday lives. And another that sees combating terrorism as a fundamental struggle not just between good and evil but also over the soul of this nation--a struggle over who we are, as a people, and what we will tolerate on the world stage.

First, let's consider the "not always along party lines." From the evidence of all his previous columns, Miniter's purpose has ever been to give Republicans a leg up over the Democrats by establishing the former as serious, and the latter as frivolous, about the war. But now that he is speaking of Lincoln and therefore of history, Miniter seems aware that he must pad the glove a little better. By stating up front that the comparison he is about to make is not strictly partisan, he creates the illusion that he is delineating eternal tendencies of humankind, as might Shakespeare or Moliere, instead of GOP talking points.

The comparison turns out to be basic conservative sputum: opponents are cowards and shirkers ("don't think the war is something that should touch their everyday lives"), we are patriots ("fundamental struggle... good and evil... soul of this nation... who we are, as a people, blah blah blah"). Still, there is a chance a few inattentive readers may be fooled into thinking they have been conducted into an examining room rather than an abbatoir.

Then there's Kaus, who spent days trying to stick a bimbo to John Kerry, and now talks about "Kerry thugs" -- operatives of the Democratic front-runner whom Kaus compares to ancient Indian assassins because they have promised to run hard against the opposition (rather than spend their time promoting fictitious sex scandals, as real patriots do).

And there's the New York Post, which might be said to have reached a new low with this bit, were its crapulence so obviously without nether limits:

Kerry's flip-flopping on the Iraq war is "consistent" with what he has done throughout most of his career: Flip -- then flop.

Of course, he did that with the Vietnam War: Months of admirable service; then, back in the United States, years of leading activists in protest against the war.

The Post hacks clearly love the term flip-flop, and use it several times a day, seeming to believe it has talismanic powers over the hearts and minds of their readers, but I must confess that even I never dreamed they would try to attach it to a man's military service: He disagreed with his country, yet served with distinction in its military! How inconsistent is that!

But, as Tammi Terrell sang, ain't no valley low enough...

SELF-PROMOTION. After a long hiatus I've put some new fiction up at my portfolio site. If you have any suggestions as to what magazines might be interested in this sort of stuff (the New Yorker has been strangely unresponsive) you might let me know.

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. The folks at Wampum have announced the 2003 Koufax Awards for lefty blogging. No doubt they would prefer that you read their whole announcement (and why shouldn't they? They worked ferociously hard and diligently on these Awards), but in the interests of exposing this worthy enterprise to a wider audience, here's a short summary:

Best Blog: Atrios.

Best Writing: Billmon.

Best Post: Billmon, "What a Tangled Web We Weave."

Best Series: David Neiwert for Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism."

Best Single Issue Blog: TalkLeft.

Best Group Blog: Daily Kos.

Most Humorous Blog: Tbogg.

Most Humorous Post: Atrios, "Preznit Giv Me Turkee."

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition: South Knox Bubba.

Best New Blog: Kicking Ass and Whiskey Bar (billmon).

Best Expert Blog: Informed Consent.

Best Commentor: zizka.

Best Non-Liberal Blog (the "Drysdale"): Tacitus.

Best Design: Daily Kos.

Best Special Effects: Uggabugga.

As Koufax followers will know, alicublog was a finalist in every single category (with multiple citations in several, including Best Blog, in which voters could choose between alicublog with fart jokes and alicublog without fart jokes), and heavily favored by London bookmaker William Hill to sweep until my announcement on January 31 at the plaza of the Fox News Building (with amplifications at the Lakeside Lounge, the corner of East 7th Street and Avenue B, and the 9th Precinct Stationhouse) that I would decline all victories unless I were preemptively laurelled in the Special Effects category for my creative use of animated smiley faces and my blinking BUSH SUX banner. But I trust this will not taint the achievements of today's worthy victors.

JESUS HATES YOU. This morning's The Corner is the usual smorgasbord of psychopathology, with lots of expected outrage at civilly-disobedient gay marriages ("Can't someone do a citizen's arrest of these law-breaking registrars in San Francisco?" cries John Derbyshire, smartly clapping his hands in front of his chest as if to summon a constable chop-chop. "Where on earth are the state authorities? Where is the Governor?" Many thanks to the always hilarious Derb for starting my workday with an image of Rainier Wolfcastle striding through the Castro, torso oiled and an automatic weapon in each hand, marvelling, "I musd kill dem... und yet... dey all look chust like me!")

But the quote of the day is from Tim Graham, one of the many holy rollers who now help maintain The Corner's standards of excrescence:

And could we have an ABC special without absurd 'Jesus scholars' like John Dominic Crossan, touting their theories that Jesus was just a social revolutionary, a misunderstood hippie before it was popular?

It is so rare these days to hear a Fundamentalist even allude to the idea that the Carpenter was more like a hippie than he was like, say, Tim Graham.

And it sent me back to those dear, dead days of the early Seventies, when it seemed the Jesus freaks were all hippies, too -- the days of Jesus Christ, Superstar and Life magazine spreads of busty, braless hippie chicks gettin' full-immersion baptised (woo hoo) and "eleven long-haired Friends a' Jesus/In a chartreuse microbus."

Back then I was just getting debriefed from an extremely strict, commie-hatin', working-class Bridgeport Catholic grammar school. No one was teaching us St. Patrick's lads "liberation theology," I can tell you that much. Yet I instantly recognized the connection between the longhaired Jesus minstrels and the Jesus we had been taught about, because as hardcore as the nuns were, even they had to admit that Christ's new law was about love, distasteful as they found it, and forgiveness, impossible as they found that. The hippies were just wearing their gospels on their sleeves.

In later years I met a few certified Jesus Freaks and found them very pleasant company, if you stayed off the topic of religion (which, believe it or not, they could, though they ended each encounter by praying that one day I would "come to Jesus"). For years I thought followers of the Man from Galilee were perfectly OK.

Well, we all know what happened after that. American Christianity became a witch-huntin'. homo-hatin', muscle-flexin' affair. The nuns of St. Pat's, apparently, hadn't been hardcore enough; they'd been unable to make that final leap of faith, and present to us a different Jesus that did not love, that did not forgive. What was needed in this new, crucial age was not a Jesus who would lead us down to the riverside for veggie casseroles and wet t-shirt baptisms, but a Jesus that would lead us into battle, and that namby-pamby "Prince of Peace" character just wasn't going to make it.

Rev Falwell and the boys took care of business, and gave us the current, punitive, ass-kicking, tough-guy Jesus, covered with NASCAR decals and Republican endorsements, that Tim Graham and the rest of his buddies can worship. Judging by their behavior, this Jesus don't want no one-another-lovin' -- that's fag stuff! No, the new Jesus wants 'em to get up and spread venom (and sometimes amicus briefs) against those who have not gotten with the heavenly program.

People who talk about how the true meaning of Islam has been "hijacked" by belligerent radicals might want to turn their attention to the motes in their own eyes.

WHAT'S ON YOUR BLACKLIST? David Horowitz has created a searchable database of enemies of freedom (i.e., anyone to the left of David Horowitz). Referrers are numerous, but I saw it at Eschaton first.

And I'm not on it! My first reaction was, Christ on a crutch, what's a fella gotta do... (Though I'm not the only, nor the most qualified, party to feel this way.)

But I see that the Democratic Party fares only slightly better -- only its Colorado chapter has had its name named thus far. I'm guessing they got pride of place because they stand in the way of Horowitz' efforts to push an "Academic Bill of Rights" (involving government oversight of the content of college classes) through that state's legislature.

Part of the fun of the database is punching in random terms -- like "music," which yields an organization run by Zach de la Rocha's mom, and one "Association De Musicos Latinoamericanos" (I think they mean the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos, though what sinister purpose Horowitz sees in their activities I can't guess, unless he suspects them of trying to Mexiforniate Philadelphia).

"Blogs" yields zero hits. I guess we're all irrelevant, after all. Well, there's always the other lively arts. Bringing theatre to small-town America is always good for a spot on the watchlist. You might do a Living Newspaper or something.

You know, this kind of stuff is always funny at first...

UPDATE. The original site is down/password-protected/something, but Atrios came up with a mirror site.

HERE'S YOUR PITH HELMET, GENERAL. General Ralph "The World is a Stereotype" Peters talks today in the New York Post about the mysterious heathen Tartar Caucasian known to you civilians as the Russian Bear:

THE Russian soldier's greatest virtue has always been stubbornness. Time and again, Russia's military was defeated, fair and square -- by Charles XII's Swedes, Napoleon's polyglot legions and Hitler's armored barbarians. But the Russians wouldn't surrender...

Today, the Russians are being stubborn again, frustrating Europe's expectations and our own fond wishes. The new czar in the Kremlin is determined to have his country forge its own way. Our well-intentioned concerns don't move him a millimeter as he redesigns the one-party state for the 21st century.

Adding to our frustration, the people of Russia support him overwhelmingly.

They're being stubborn again.

Vladimir Putin's Russia presents those of us who revere democracy with a series of dilemmas. It's the worrisome member of the family of "Western" nations, charming one day, crazy the next -- and prone to nasty behavior... What do we make of a country that drinks itself to death, yet idolizes a national leader who refuses to raise a shot-glass to his lips?

And so on, in the manner of Commander McBragg talking about his battles with the fuzzie-wuzzies. These Caucasus Tartar Mongol hordes are shown as savages that easily submit to the yoke of Putinism, yet one is invited to admire, after a fashion, their bovine stubbornness.

The General has an easy answer for everything, and everywhere. Of course, the prescription varies from region to region. While in the Middle East, he advises that we show the damn wogs a bit of cold steel in the belly -- "Exemplary punishment may be out of fashion, but it's one of the most enduringly effective tools of statecraft. Where you cannot be loved, be feared" -- toward the Eurasian Cossack Tartar he advises a less forthright approach, though the regime is unspeakably corrupt and noxious to "those of us who revere democracy," and "Russia has done far more than its share to make terrorism worse."

"So how do we justify cooperating with Russia... Morally, we can't justify it. Yet, we cooperate. Because we must. In the real world, that's just how things work sometimes. You go with the less-bad alternative and grit your teeth."

Besides, says Peters, now looking a little less like the Scourge of the Satraps than previously, "An angel won't replace Putin in the Kremlin. But Putin isn't entirely a devil. The glass is dirty, but it's nearly three-quarters full."

Why does Peters take such a -- dare we say, moderate POV on the Russkies, but not on the Arabs? Could it be that the Russians would not be so easy to bomb into submission, or its eleven-time-zone mass so easy to occupy?

Or could some of it be that the General just has warmer feelings toward one set of stereotypes than for another?

THE TUNE ITSELF. The Mighty Mighty Reason Man, understandably unwilling to focus on politics every minute of the day, uncorks a long lament on the parlous state of popular music. Sample bit:

There is very little new music that doesn't sound like utter shit to me, and I actually caught myself referring to some Nu Metal song as "just noise" the other day. Just noise?!? Dear God, soon I'll be denouncing Elvis's lurid pelvic gyrations.

Understandable reaction. There is nothing new under the sun, the preacher sayeth, and when you reach a certain age new things aren't going to sound as good to you anymore.

So is there any objective basis for MMRM's verdict that "overall, the kids don't know what the hell they're doing these days"? Well, as I tell my Saturday reading comprehension class, if you can't prove a fact it's just an opinion, and there is no reliable metric for the suck/doesn't suck factor.

I would venture to say, though, that how we think about pop music has some influence on what we get, and so read with an interest an article in last week's Entertainment Weekly (Feb 13) about how the Beatles were now some kind of "alternative" band, respected and in some respects imitated by the smart, popular kids. Tom Sinclair quotes Mark Hoppus of blink-182: "Of course the Beatles are still relevant. They changed the landscape of music forever. They are geniuses and heroes and will always remain relevant."

The other opinion-leader quotes are as laudatory, but no less dull and unthoughtful, and focus either on the total like awesomeness of the band or on that highly prized quality, innovation: "...sitars, symphonies, feedback, echo, multitrack," says a music professor at Trinity College, "They were like Orville and Wilbur Wright, even though people are now flying fancier airplanes." Another guy says he likes "Tomorrow Never Knows" because "that's like, the first electronic song." Q-Tip says the Beatles' tendency to "lay the music down, manipulate it, fuck with it, try to push it... is the hip-hop aesthetic."

What's interesting is that no one in the whole story talks about the Beatles' ability to write excellent tunes, or indeed about any musical gifts that do not involve fucking with sounds once they're out, as oppose to creating them.

Sinclair obviously took this direction on purpose, but I think it was an easy sell to EW because that's all we think we want from music anymore.

This is the Age of the Phat Beat, and at musical equipment stores there's as much of a crowd around the digital gear and samples section as there is around the pine boxes that emit the original unprocessed sounds. Pro Tools has been the industry recording standard for about a decade, and DJ and producers are superstars. The country may be less enthusiastic than it once was about processed foods, but these are boom times for processed music.

And a lot of processed music is great. One might argue that the music mills of old (like the Brill Building and Motown's famed The Corporation) were the Industrial Age forebears of whatever fun-factories churn out the current wave of product. Only those guys were churning out tunes, see. The Beatles wouldn't have been able to push the white-lab-coated sound engineers out of the control room and fuck with their own shit if they hadn't demonstrated their ability to grab ears with their tunes. The ensuing technological playtime was an outgrowth of their musical genius, not a substitute for it.

It's great that we have all the bells and whistles we have now -- that's the product of the restless exploration of creative minds. And the best sonic experimenters from Negativland to Ween to Fatboy Slim make objets d'audio that are at least as impressive as anything the best song/guitar bands put out. But I think things have flipped over in the minds of the audience and even of a lot of the music makers: the raw material is less important than the shiny product that can made of it. If the Beatles were starting now, I suppose the Phat Beats would be engaged early on, and who knows what "A Hard Day's Night" would sound like if the Neptunes had first crack at it, rather than the rather professorial George Martin.

The paleness some of us perceive in contemporary pop has to do, I think, with the expectations bred by years of technical and -- maybe more so -- industry progress. Once the distance between your band playing a local sock-hop and the exalted status of Gerry and the Pacemakers was not so great. Now it's a world away. Why would you want to write something as modest as a great pop song when there's this ornate machine that makes you sound like money? Why wait for the symphony orchestra? There's a module for that at Sam Ash.

Once upon a time, if you wanted all that flash and syrup, you didn't go into rock and roll or r&b. You made Cliff Richard records.

After a while music blather is as tiresome as political blather, but I will add that I sometimes think the popularity of "divas" like Beyonce (however attractive the package) have to do with the sheer power of their vocal apparati, which push something like a human sound through all the 24K schmaltz. And that Outkast comes up with some great tunes.

ACT LIKE BLUTO, VOTE LIKE NIEDERMEYER. Jonah Goldberg is the son of longtime GOP dirty trickster Lucianne Goldberg, and an apple that appears not to have fallen from the tree at all. Note his own recent brown ops:

• Weeks ago, Crooked Timber suggested that the anonymous letters that increasingly comprise NRO's/The Corner's ammunition against Democrats were fake ("If you possess an email address and an eye-opening story, you've passed the rigorous fact-checking that has made National Review and the Penthouse Forum world-famous") and proposed that readers send fake anti-Democrat testimonials to The Corner to see if they would bite.
  
  
• At The Corner, Goldberg acknowledged CT's strategy and defended himself against the specific charge on which it was based ("...while the posts in the Corner may be anonymous, they are virtually never anonymous to me... some emails should certainly be taken with a grain of salt on the off-chance a correspondent is embellishing...").
  
  
• Popstar Moby suggests to the New York Daily News that concerned Bush opponents should spread false stories about the President's past.
  
  
• Seeing the main chance, Goldberg harshes on Moby and, without notice, changes his characterization of the CT attack:

  A couple of weeks ago, several liberal bloggers announced that they wanted their readers to deliberately make up fake emails and send them to NR because they found the real emails we were posting in the Corner too unhelpful to their cause. So far they've all been way too stupid to fool us, but that could change... it now seems safe to predict that the Moby-Moore fringe of liberalism is ratcheting-up it's ends justify-the-means approach to political discourse. Get ready for the Age of Mobyism, it won't be pretty.

In short, what Goldberg knew, and said he knew, was an attack on The Corner's credulity when it comes to anonymous anti-Democratic emails, he now conflates with Moby's active attempt to spread lies about the President. Even better, Goldberg uses this hastily-arranged moral high ground to denounce the Democrats' initiation of dirty tricks -- as if GOP Astroturf (or, for that matter, his Mom) had never existed.

This strategy is classical, and best known by Otter's use of it in Animal House: "Well, you can do what you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you bad-mouth the United States of America!" No wonder Goldberg's always got that shit-eating sneer on his face: he's got what for modern conservatives must be the best of both worlds: he gets to live out his favorite movie every day -- in defense of the Dean Wormers of the world.

LET'S PLAY SPIN DOCTOR. In the course of one of her typically milky, unfocused novenas, the Crazy Jesus Lady challenges her presumably like-minded readers to take part, without pay, in a White House creative exploratory:

The Bush people have to roll it all into, say, one speech, which can be distilled to one paragraph, which people will distill to a sentence or two to explain to themselves and others why they support the president for re-election... What should the Bush paragraph consist of? How to make it new? How to make it memorable, and true? Readers, you are invited to wrap up in one paragraph what the Bush campaign should say as it unveils itself anew.

I would be much more eager to see the responses if I weren't aware that OpinionJournal very carefully screens them. So the cries of "Free Silver!" "Drive the Dusky Invader Southward!" and "Millions for Ethanol, Not One Cent for Deficit Reduction!" will probably not be seen by a wider audience.

CJL adds that "The White House reads this site. They'll see it." Alas, I cannot promise that sort of attention. But if you guys want to run your own paragraphs past the dozens of sleepless graduate students, weisenheimers, and ne'er-do-wells who comprise my audience, feel free to avail the comments feature to do so. I'll start the ball rolling with one of my own:

Funny how the Lord works: he allows the Antichrist to go to 'Nam and make himself a war hero, while his own true servant is forced by circumstance and a fear of examining rooms to spend his war years playing foosball and contributing to the invention of the beer bong. Now the evil one stands draped in glory, while I, like Job, seem destined for the dungheap. If you folks have read your Bible, though, you know which of us is truly God's favorite. P.S. Remember I'm the one that hates fags.

WE KNOW BECAUSE WE RAN THEM THROUGH THE NRO VERSIMILITRON.

KERRY'S WAR [John Derbyshire]
Two very authentic-sounding responses from vets to my previous blog on
Kerry's Vietnam war record. Both agree completely.


Posted at 01:54 PM

SHORTER CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS. Must write about the evil Democrats, but Kerry's too hot to touch now. Dean's down. Might's well kick him. By the way, I do like principled anti-war candidates, especially if they can't win. Bartender! Some more napkins, please.

LIFE IMITATES VAUDEVILLE. Instapundit, who used to report on massive anti-war demonstrations by looking for the little clot of guys with GO BUSH signs and going "Heh, Indeed," shows a similar inattention to relevance in brandishing this Andrea Harris quote:

So, apparently we are now concluding that Hussein did not, in fact, have a huge stash of nuclear weapons aimed at New York and Washington DC. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It means that the thing the administration wanted to prevent was, in fact, prevented.

How's that old joke go?

"Hey, why'd you take my five dollars?"
"Coyote insurance."
"Coyote insurance? There's not a coyote for miles around here!"
"See how well it works?"

THE THOUSANDTH TIME AND COUNTING. Conservatives have torn into this post at The Note and are dragging the bloody bits across the internet:

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions"...

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:

Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.

Sounds pretty hopeless for conservatives, doesn't it? Which explains the two terms apiece enjoyed by President Carter, President Mondale, President Dukakis, President Clinton, and President Gore. And the Democrats' current veto-proof majority in Congress.

Remember, just because it makes no sense doesn't mean it's true.

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

RAINY DAY FUN. You can go to the Discotheque site and register to look at the party pictures. A lot of them look like this:



Then you can print them out, get a pen, and pretend you're an editor at Vice.

WHITE MAN'S BURDEN PART #3,420. I seldom follow those links at Instapundit that essentially say, "Here's a soldier that agrees with me, proof that the rest of you are sissies and traitors." Today, I broke form, goaded by IP's insistence that this message from an Army Public Affairs Officer "should be printed out and posted on the bulletin boards of newspapers everywhere."

Essentially, the anonymous soldier's pitch is that 1.) reporters are lazy and 2.) Iraqis are mentally retarded.

Now, I know from personal experience that the former is certainly true, though I would argue to the Army's PR agent that reporters dog it most when they know they're being fed bullshit and have no spade with which to dig -- which would seem to describe the lot of most "embeds" working under the Pentagon's current conditions. (The soldier also reveals that his comrades in arms don't like reporters, which will surprise no one who has survived the typical American playground).

The bit about the Iraqi people is kinda weird, though. Their long life under tyranny, the solder assures us, has caused them to "misinterpret things they see." For example, the local peasants "believed American food gave us X-Ray vision and that we had mechanical enhancements implanted in our bodies." While this seems credible (action-movie imagery interpreted by pre-industrial minds), our military Virgil takes things further with a little culturally-induced interpretation of his own: "Given that 80% of Iraqis are about as intellectually and emotionally developed as an American 6th grader," he says, "we must be very careful in trusting the average Iraqi's 'eye-witness testimony.'"

In other words, since the peasant is too simple to properly interpret Terminator movies, he is incapable of comprehending simple space-time dynamics (like who shot Achmed, and what uniform he was wearing). Of course it may be that the peasants are just plain lying -- our guide suggests that later, too, almost as an afterthought.

But the overall impression he seems to be trying to leave is that these people have no cognitive skills to speak off, and lazy reporters working for "news networks that are pushing a storyline" (unlike Army Public Affairs Officers, who are devoted to plain truth) are wrong to even consider the testimony of these subhumans.

Maybe those links weren't meant to be followed.

THE QUIET AMERICAN. I'm watching the tail end of the President on Russert now (Sunday sleep is, at this stage in my life, more important than political vigilance). I can easily see how people who don't support Bush would find him weak and unconvincing. I sure found him so. Russert's economic charts would have provoked a stronger defense, or objection, from a Republican Councilman than they got from the President of the United States.

But the show wasn't meant for me. The most remarkable thing about the event, as opposed to what actually happened during it, is that Bush was engaged in a display that was not totally managable by his office. This was a conscious decision by very smart operators, and my early, underinformed theory is that the President is lying doggo.

There is no way that he could have seemed powerful and confident in the situation: he seldom does when there's no backdrop covered with propaganda messages, no manicured text to work from. He didn't look so hot in the 2000 debates, either. But people liked him enough to vote for him anyway; in fact, he almost got a majority.

I hate to glom onto the conventional wisdom about Bush defying expectations, but it would make sense if the Bush boys were allowing a mild performance in February with a view toward a macho makeover in the Fall. You don't make red-meat speeches if you don't have to, because those things tend to wear out over time. Kerry has to make such speeches right now because he's running for something, and will be for months to come. Bush, I expect, will emerge from his New York Convention as from a chrysalis in the form of... well, I also expect they're still working on that, but I suspect it will involve our nation's military, the American Flag, Jesus Christ, and, of course, the photo opportunity down the street.

How that will work is anyone's guess, but it will be a lot more energetic and focused than what we saw today.