THE ANTI-ZENGERS. Boy, OpinionJournal is going absolutely batshit crazy these days. Their lead editorial today comes out against the fucking Red Cross. What's next -- a stinging rebuke to Santa Claus?

Pentagon critics are treating a leaked Red Cross assessment -- first reported in The Wall Street Journal last Friday -- as proof that detainee abuse was widespread in Iraq and that the military was unresponsive to complaints. After reading the report, we think the real story is the increasing politicization of this venerable humanitarian group.

Apparently OJ's mad because the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)'s report on our inhumane treatment of prisoners of war got leaked, and the Red Cross hasn't lied about it to preserve our torturers' anonymity. (It is strange, then, that OJ doesn't take a monent here to also chastise the Journal's reporters for disseminating this anti-disinformation to the public. Maybe even OJ writers get tired of being laughed at.)

The screed closes:

This ICRC behavior poses a serious risk to its relationship with governments around the world, as well as to its special status when there are future revisions of the Geneva Conventions. We hope that some adults inside the organization understand this, because the ICRC's self-inflicted demise would be a real loss for prisoners of regimes that are truly odious.

Nice little international organization ya got here. Be a shame if someone was ta undercut its credibility, if ya know what I mean!

Meanwhile another story in their Arts & Leisure section (you know, one of those dark alleys where conservatives dig through works of art for political talking points) talks about the "incendiary power" of photojournalism as if it were black magic or something. The author, Eric Gibson, approves government suppression of war photos ("Think only of the way that pictures and film footage," he shudders, "actually did turn public opinion against the Vietnam War"), and apprently takes from Abu Ghraib only one lesson ("besides the obvious moral one," he tosses off): that we better do something about that damned new technology -- "another photographic medium that would do the damage this time around: the digital image, snapped on a camera carried in the pocket of an enlisted man or woman and e-mailed across the ether."

OJ apparently finds chaste prom dresses Tony, and freedom of the press Tacky. You'd have to dig very deep to find "journalists" so deeply committed as these to the antithesis of every journalistic principle -- in fact, all the way to the other side of the world.

LEARN TO READ. In defending the indefensible (i.e., himself), John Derbyshire aligns his brutal judgement on Abu Ghraib (i.e., torture all you want, just don’t include sex, consensual or otherwise) with Orwell:

One of the many things Orwell taught us (see, e.g., his essay on Kipling) is that the dirty work of civilization -- the work of policemen, prison guards, soldiers, interrogators of terrorist suspects -- is *dirty*. It's rough work, and won't always meet the standards of my and your personal lives. Someone is doing it on our behalf, though, right now -- not just in Baghdad, but in jails and police stations across America, and honesty compels us to acknowledge their work, and the much greater horrors it helps keep at bay.

I have no doubt Derbyshire is steeped in Kipling ("It’s ‘Tommy’ this, and ‘Tommy’ that, and ‘Tommy, wait outside’/But it’s ‘Special train for Atkins’ when the trooper’s on the tide," and all that), but his understanding of Orwell on Kipling seems poor, if this is the essay he’s talking about:

It is no use claiming, for instance, that when Kipling describes a British soldier beating a ‘nigger’ with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him, he is acting merely as a reporter and does not necessarily approve what he describes. There is not the slightest sign anywhere in Kipling’s work that he disapproves of that kind of conduct -- on the contrary, there is a definite strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have. Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting. It is better to start by admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.

And so on. Orwell’s appreciation of Kipling was real, but in defending him against the "refined people," he was certainly not defending Kipling’s enthusiasm for "Imperialism as a sort of forcible evangelizing" -- Orwell’s words, which Derbyshire would seem to take as an unequivocal endorsement.

Orwell was sensible of the difference between "the nineteenth-century imperialist outlook" – Kipling’s – "and the modern gangster outlook" -- represented by the Fascism at which England was then at war. Orwell seems to have preferred the former, at least in terms of moral clarity, but he was also well aware that "Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern."

I think a lot of conservatives latch onto Orwell because he talks smack about liberals, and there is certainly an abundance of this in his Kipling essay. (Of course, they tend to elide the inconvenient fact of Orwell’s Socialism, and now that Christopher Hitchens has loosened his own grip of that banner, they generally prefer to get their Orwellism from him.) One would think, though, that moral absolutists such as they would not mistake the sharing of an annoyance with a commonality of interest – unless their only genuine interest is to talk smack about liberals, which seems to be the case.

THE CROSSROADS OF ART, COMMERCE, AND THE BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS. Snarkmarket has discovered what Maya Lin, creator of the exquisite Vietnam Memorial in Washington, has been up to lately: designing lawn furniture.

Well, time for me to get back to work...

WISH IT INTO THE CORNFIELD, PART #3,451. Andrew Sullivan reads the Times' coverage of the Berg execution, and doesn't like that Berg's family was interviewed -- or, rather, that they said some things that don't line up with the sort of "dulce est decorum est" horseshit in which Sullivan specializes, and the Times printed it:

The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday, insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him...

The Iraqi police took Nicholas Berg, 26, into custody on March 24 and held him in a jail that he described in the message as managed by Iraqis with oversight from United States Military Police forces. He wrote that federal agents had questioned his reasons for being in Iraq, whether he had ever built a pipe bomb or had been in Iran.

"They can detain him and deny him his basic civil rights of a lawyer, a phone call or even a charge for 13 days, but they can't get him" on a plane, David Berg said.

"Yes, the family's understandable anger should be reported," concedes Sully. "But their anger should not dictate the entire gist of your story." See, it's not newsworthy that the family of the deceased is pissed at the U.S. Government -- or not propaganda-worthy, anyway. Axis of Evil, why we fight, stay the course -- that's journalism, by God!

Sullivan gets multiple unmitigated-gall points for following this up with a letter from his readership: "I just saw the Nick Berg video in its entirety... I really feel extremely bad for Nick's family. I wish I could give each one of them a big hug and say 'I love you' to them." Make sure you clamp a hand over their mouths when you hug them, buddy, or Sullivan might hear something he doesn't like.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY. New Jersey is becoming a place where politicians don't buckle under pressure from their bishops, and scientists use cloning to cure cancer. Give me the more soulful Jersey of insane, violent mobsters.

SIMONIZING. Having told the world that any one of us would have tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib given the chance ("Who is that nitwit, most of us have been asking? Well, that nitwit is us"), Roger L. "I'm for gay rights" Simon opens the floor, and the usual grunting, roaring, and chest-beating ensues. Simon only deigns to interrupt when a poster named Tano points out, undeniably, that a lot of prominent conservatives have been quite okay with this inhuman behavior. This incenses his host, who chides:

...I don't respond to you for a simple reason. I have no interest in the terms liberal and conservative. They are junk terms to me, factually meaningless... Now some people call me a neocon, yet I vehemently favor gay marriage and stem cell research. It's all boring BS to me. I'm just interested in the facts of a situation. So the minutes a post begins with conservatives this or liberals that, I just skip it...

The perfidious labeller having been dismissed, a less chideworthy Simonite leaps into the fray:

I'm pretty tired of those Iraqis who only know how to whine, criticize, and complain, but never lift a finger to help. It's their future as well as ours that our troops are dying for. But whenever "their" people were maltreated or killed, they condemned the Americans, and rejoiced when the Americans were burnt and quartered. We grieve for our dead and wounded too, but we don't jump up and down when an Iraqi was killed... Don't Iraqis have responsibilities too?

An odd reaction, it would seem: chastising the Iraqis for getting all hot and bothered about an occupying army torturing their fellow citizens. But, brothers and sister, let us not paint this a "conservative" response, for in Simon's world, who's to say what's liberal and conservative? Or whether torture is anathema or just something we all might easily engage in, were we not busy with Hollywood screenplays? Let us cast aside meaningless labels, when all good men are agreed that Kerry was a pussy to serve in Vietnam and so must be kept from the Presidency.

I thought liberals were the ones that were all into moral relativism and shit. Ooops, but there I go again, using those tired old labels.

ALL IS WELL! INDEED! The torture thing really has Professor Reynolds working his Kevin-Bacon-in-Animal-House routine. Among his recent assertions indicating a paucity of locations toward which to run, and at which to hide:

• People who draw our attention to this scandal are just trying to defeat America. You should ignore them.
  
  
• We do stuff like this in our own prisons all the time -- though without the electrodes, dog attacks, simulated rape, etc. Or maybe we do have those things, too. But do I look like I care?
  
  
• One of my buddies says I'm really prolific and another says I need a vacation, so I'm going to watch a stupid movie with my wife, and I'll go on about the flags in it and my wife will go on about how Jessica Alba isn't asking anyone for a government handout, no sir, and suddenly this Abu Whatchamacallit thing that has been disturbing my sleepy afternoons in the faculty lounge seems very far away.

JESUS IS JUST ALRIGHT. Owing to a bizarre set of circumstances, I viewed yesterday The Passion of the Christ. I've seen this thing alternately praised and damned as a phenomenon, but I have hardly seen it reviewed as a movie. That makes sense: the plot is a central narrative of a major religion, and the approach is personal rather than institutional -- more like Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew than King of Kings -- so it was bound to be controversial in terms that have little to do with aesthetics.

I'm not immune to this either. I could see that the craft aspects, including the acting, are all very fine, but outside of that I was aware throughout of the received experience that was coloring my reaction. If you were ever obliged to memorize the Stations of the Cross, as I was as a good Catholic boy, you're going to be pulled in by the story no matter what.

Gibson isn't just telling the story out of the book, though. He uses a couple of devices to interpret it for us. Some of these glosses I found lovely. After denying Jesus three times (and recalling, in flashback, Jesus' prediction of this), Peter has an episode of stunned shame that is very real and moving. And when Jesus has one of his falls on the way up the hill, Mary flashes back on Christ as a toddler, tumbling in the dust outside their home. It's as corny as Griffith and as effective.

There are also a lot of flashbacks that reflect Jesus' message of love and forgiveness, but these are overwhelmed by the behavior of the mob, the priests, and the Romans. Most of the action is about thoroughly unsympathetic people beating the living shit out of Jesus Christ. Popping in a little "love your enemies" here and there doesn't cut much ice when you're watching leering Centurions ripping the skin off the Son of God's back, or sneering priests mocking him as he agonizes on the Cross, all at length and in graphic detail.

In fact, the cumulative effect is that of a revenge fantasy: when Jesus dies and the earth cracks under the temple and the Romans all run away from the storm, there's only one moviegoer reaction that makes sense, and it isn't "Love Thy Neighbor" -- it's "Payback Time." (National Review's Michael Graham, attempting to refute charges of anti-Semitism against the film, wrote, "after the movie, I wanted to kick the crap out of a Roman." I wonder whether it occured to him how that might be taken in Rome.)

I suppose my opinion could be dismissed as that of a bleeding-heart crypto-Christian who is not down with the Church Militant mission of the filmmaker. You could dismiss all criticism in the same way, if the only point of works of art were to reenforce or refute prejudices, rather than to illuminate the human experience.

(ALMOST) NO COMMENT. From the brilliant Margaret at Matters of Little Significance:

Read about John Negroponte, the man who is supposed to be US Ambassador to Iraq.

He is accused of sponsoring terrorism for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also accused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.

He was confirmed by the senate on May 6: 95-3 with 2 not voting.

Kerry was one of the 2 who did not vote.

My senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, both voted in favor.

It is incredible to me that with all that's going on, they still voted to make someone who is notorious for encouraging human rights abuses be ambassador to Iraq.

I hate to say so, but this episode has left me feeling a little Naderish.

OK, SO I’M A PHILISTINE. I finally got to the Whitney Biennial last night. This was my third or fourth WB, and by far the one with the most polymers. I was too stupified to take notes, but I did get a few laughs. One guy pasted matted fur to animal skulls, one of which was attached to a skeletal structure made of plaster and detritus; little wire birds pulled from its guts lengths of Italian Christmas lights, perhaps signifying entrails. In another installation, pixelated clouds moved slowly across a blue screen while futuristic music of the kind Chris Sarandon played for Margaux Hemingway in Lipstick blared from a stereo. This was called Super Mario Clouds.

But in the main it was awful: a collection of goofy items, like a stylized Roman Centurion’s helmet with a fried egg stuck on it; a full-sized, glass-panelled dumpster packed with industrial waste (a towering rebuke to the notion that a good idea will make a good work of art); little rooms filled with lights or plaster dust. The time and money that one imagines was spent on these hideosities were nearly as wearying as their spectrally thin aesthetic effects.

The painting and drawing (with the exception of some ringer Hockneys) was even worse. Most, like Julie Mehretu’s palimpsests, are at first glance interesting, until you realize that whatever deeper mysteries they might reveal upon contemplation are bland and mechanical. One might as well be solving rebus puzzles.

assume astro vivid focus did a big, nice-looking room pasted over with old advertising and hi-life images. In an exhibition filled with renderings that at their best rise to the exalted heights of commercial illustration and interior design, this is at least crafty, and gives some extra seconds of pleasure. But it struck me that a.a.v.f. was taking the imagery at face value – that the whole thing was just a force multiplier for the original effects wrought by admen and graphic designers.

Film and photography were better. Slater Bradley had a nice short with Stephen Hawking’s voice-box thing on the soundtrack, expostulating on the universe, while a home-movie camera scanned the faces in a children’s choir. This made a better effect than the other children’s choir thing, with a skeleton conducting. (This was one of the multi-screen pieces, the idea of which seems to be that it is bad to indoctrinate kids; another filled a room with cow’s udders.) Chloe Piene showed a girl in a tank-top and panties splattered in mud, roaring; when I realized another girl wasn’t going to come in and wrestle with her, I lost interest.

The saddest commentary came from a tour guide explicating some crappy painting to her charges. In a sidebar she mentioned the recent Giorgio Armani show at the Guggenheim, and said, "We’ll see more of this kind of collaboration of art and commerce in the years to come."

WHY DOES VICTOR DAVIS HANSON HATE AMERICA SO MUCH? In the course of minimizing the Iraqi POW thing, Victor Davis Hanson characterizes the Western peoples thusly:

We are "plagued with attention-deficit problems." We are "affluent, leisured and consensual," which means that we are pussies about what other people think of us ("not so much worried about being convicted of being illiberal as having the charge even raised in the first place").

When confronted with graphic war images, the "Western suburbanite" will "change channels and head to the patio, mumbling either, 'How can we fight such barbarians' or ? better yet ? 'Why would we wish to?'"

And when faced with the grotesque spectacle of American servicemen torturing prisoners, instead of shrugging it off, the West "engages not merely in much needed self-critique and scrutiny, but reaches a feeding frenzy that evolves to outright cultural cannibalism."

He also compares our "institutionalized cowardice" unfavorably to the way things are done in, say, Russia. "They really don't care much if you hate them," he swoons. "They are likely to do some pretty scary things if you press them." Nonetheless he does acknowledge that "you wouldn't really wish to emigrate there for a teaching fellowship," which I guess means that we can't expect Hanson to pull a Coriolanus and lead the admirably bloodthirsty Russkies against the weak-kneed West, though the thought seems to tempt him.

When all the Abu Ghraib stuff first came out, I figured on the "Of course this is terrible, but [insert rank neocon absurdity here]" responses, and even the "Of course this is terrible, but it's all the liberals' fault" angle. But this "It's not terrible at all, you Westerners are like-a de woman" thing is more what I'd expect from a secondary villain in an Indiana Jones movies than from a pundit. Is this how far we've sunk? Oh, much lower than this, for sure, but let's not tempt the blues on such a sunny day...

HEARTS AND MINDS, PART 56,957. Oh sweet Jesus. Daniel Henninger says we aren't doing enough propaganda in the Arab world -- and that's why the recent unpleasantness at Abu Ghraib is making us look bad. As ever, he traces the problem back to the perfidious Clintons.

Anybody remember Charlotte Beers? Early in the War on Whatchamacallit, the former Chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather worldwide advertising agency was made an Undersecretary of State by the Bush Administration, and tasked and budgeted with the dissemination of pro-our side messages in Arabia. Beers left the government last year "for health reasons." A few months back she talked to advertising columnist Bob Garfield about her experiences, and here's some of the little that she said:

Nothing would be more dangerous than silence. It's like asking Tylenol to be very quiet when people found out there was poison inadvertently put into their Tylenol packages. They went immediately to the air and every phase of communication to talk about what they were going to do, how it would be handled, and they won a huge round with the consumer groups. We do have some policies that are not popular, and that doesn't mean necessarily that we can make those popular, but we can certainly engage on many other fronts...

The skill it takes to have a brand cross borders is to create a universal understanding, you know, maybe the love of a Coke and the party that goes with it, and so on. And the second thing was to always honor and respect the local customs. And so the lessons that we all had to learn as marketers, to earn the right to sell our brands in those countries is one the United States has to practice. I mean the first thing I did in the first year was bring in people from the private sector to conduct courses in that kind of communication which is about context, and also about the basics of branding, really.

All respect to Ms. Beers, a former client of mine, but does this sound like the kind of thinking that would make a dime's worth of difference in a region that regards us as an occupying force? Branding? A Tylenol scenario? Coca-Cola?

That kind of thing did work once, in the former Soviet Union. The aura of our plenty, our brands, our Levi's and Fords and Coca-Colas, had a powerful effect on people who felt themselves oppressed by their own government, not ours. But we're the Big Daddys now -- scrambling to convince a violently hostile region that our berserkers do not reflect our true intentions. Yet we have precious little Coke or unpoisoned Tylenol to offer as tokens of good faith.

No wonder Beers bailed. It's impossible to sell the sizzle without the steak.

RIFFMEISTERS. I was gonna make this a comment to Norbizness' excellent refutation of the lame Total Guitar Top Riffs list, but why not share with the rest of the class?

Nor is boss, but he takes a few missteps. I have to point out that "Hot Rats" is not a Mothers album, and the epochal "Willie the Pimp" is a Zappa/Beefheart/Jean-Luc Ponty riff, to be more accurate. (Speaking of fiddlers, how about "Diggy Diggy Lo" or "Jole Blon" or "Orange Blossom Special"?)

Whatever you think of the source material, you have to spot, as TG did, AC/DC and their patented off-tempo, pull-against-the-drummer riffing. But while "Back in Black" is alright, I think "Back in Business" is a superior example.

Also, if you put, as Nor does, one Neil Young riff up there, you have to put at least three. Young's secret weapon is the riff-embedded rhythm lick. If "Hey Hey, My My" rates, so must "Cinnamon Girl" and "I'm the Ocean," at least. (I'd drop "The Loner," too, but that's just me.)

Among the obscurities, let me insert "Tough Fucking Shit" by G.G. Allen and the Murder Junkies, "Ain't My Crime" by Motorhead, "Easter Woman" by the Residents, "Celebrated Summer" by Husker Du, and "Tractor Rape Chain" by Guided by Voices.

In the under-your-nose category, where the hell are "Cannonball," "Pleasant Valley Sunday," "Heart Full of Soul," "Victoria," "Satisfaction," et alia?

But folks, as the old Shake 'n' Bake commercial used to go, you can make it good's I can. Speak up!

MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FREE TICKETS. At National Review Online, Andrew Leigh exposes more liberal perfidy among our nation's intellectual snobs. There was apparently only a handful of right-wingers at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, proof of -- well, of under-representation of people who didn't want to be there, one imagines. Within mere grafs, Leigh has to admit, "Okay, maybe it isn't fair to judge a festival by who decides to rent the booths. After all, one presumes that if Regnery Books or NR deigned to rent a booth, they would have been permitted."

And yet he goes on writing.

He even interviews the festival's organizer, who shares with Leigh a long list of conservatives he invited, most of whom declined. Leigh is unfazed. He contacts Regnery. A "publicity representative, who did not want her name mentioned," says she doesn't remember the invitation. The plot thickens!

The piece ends, predictably enough, with a plea for diversity of the conservative kind. "Angelenos are being deprived of one side of a very important debate," Leigh bemoans.

I quite agree, and in the same spirit request that Leigh put me up for a spot on the NRO Post-Election Cruise. While it's true that I have not purchased a ticket, I think the burden rather lies on NRO to accomodate me, since it is they who have so far deprived their guests of "one side of a very important debate," which I am happy to supply for a small fee. Opportunities for intellectual diversity, after all, don't just march right up to you and plunk down $1,549 for admission -- you have to dig for them. I will consent to attend, therefore, if all my expenses are paid, if they can contrive to keep that hag Malkin away from me, and if I can make a naked human pyramid of John Derbyshire, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Stanley Kurtz. I'll be waiting to hear if their commitment to diversity is real.

SHORTER DIANA WEST. All you pro-abortion women stop having fun. Don't you know you're supposed to be humorless? Oh, darn -- now you're making me look humorless, you ghoulish c-words!

MY ENGLISH, SHE NOT SO GOOD. "The first thing is that the pictures [of tortured Iraqi prisoners] really prove that the US is superior to the Baathist dictatorship." -- Johan Norberg.

No worries, Johan -- they have trouble with English in Tennessee, too.

This whole "Yeah, well, the Arabs are worse" schtick may work this time. But what about next time?

NOTA BENE. To those of you who may have stumbled upon this regurgitation of some Terry Teachout pieces at OpinionJournal: please note that Teachout is not, in the main, the right-wing hatchet man that the OJ editors have therein portrayed by selective quotation. It's sad what you have to do to sell books, particularly to the True Believers. Teachout's blog About Last Night is still very much recommended; it does the art of criticism proud. He does let tip his ideological hand sometimes, but one of my other favorite critics, the lefty Michael Feingold, does so even more egregiously. And, unlike bluenosed asswipes like Roger Kimball, Teachout has well-developed aesthetics, rather than mere snobbery, on his side. Besides, anyone who sees Stanley Crouch for the fraud he is deserves our support.

SELF-AWARENESS DERBY. Jim Lileks sez:

...he didn’t strike me as a jolly old soul. But it has to be hard to be happy when one carries around so much bile and rage. It’s tiring. Anger wears you down, especially when your anger doesn’t seem to accomplish anything... You want to live like that? I don’t want to live like that. Because when you see red all the time you miss things...

Was Lileks, like old Scrooge, whisked to another dimension and forced to view his own life at a remove, which spectacle spurred this third-person repentance? No, he's talking about Ted Rall.

I realize it's just an angle -- Jimbo's harshed on Rall so often, even he must be tired of looking up synonyms for "traitor" -- but what do you make of a guy who thinks Democrats are potential terrorists, yet goes on for grafs and grafs about the overproductive bile ducts of others?

One is tempted to use the words "denial," or "projection," but you know what hearty laughter this kind of pop psychologizing draws from conservatives. So how about I just call him an asshole?

WHAT I DID ON MY COFFEE BREAK. I had a few minutes so I went to see if David Horowitz is still a horse's ass. You be the judge:

I guarantee you that conservatives who are in the forefront of the battle of ideas defending this country -- Victor Davis Hanson, David Frum, Robert Kagan to name three -- have never been commencement speakers, officially sponsored keynoters and honored guests of any liberal university. This tells you more than you probably care to know about the commitments of our university officials and the state of their campuses.

You know, that might make a good theme for the commencement addresses I've been asked to deliver at Bob Jones University! (Or perhaps I'll rest that week, and let Michael Moore fill in for me.)

Speaking of equine posteriors, John Podhoretz explains that we leftwards are actually happy Iraqi prisoners were tortured because that makes Iraq more like Vietnam in our warped minds. "They never knew happier days than when they were standing in opposition to their country," he declares. I wonder how he knows so much about us? Maybe he has attended some of our liberal parties, incognito in a wig of luxuriant dreadlocks.

Brothers and sisters, the secret is getting out -- soon the whole world will know that we hate this fucking country and want it overthrown by militant Islam, which totally rocks! There's only one way left to conceal the truth from ordinary Americans: start using bigger words.

THE WEATHER STARTED GETTING ROUGH, THE TINY SHIP WAS TOSSED. John O'Neill, who served with Kerry in Vietnam, announces in OpinionJournal, "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief."

So of course I immediately read the thing, hoping for bombshell revelations, and was disappointed to view yet again that already-tired litany of Kerry cracks: Kerry was in a book with the American flag upside down on the cover, Kerry testified to military abuses which O'Neill did not witness, Kerry is an evil traitor whose "misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades," etc.

And I thought, what a terrible, missed opportunity! Has O'Neill never read a tell-all biography, even in the supermarket check-out line? If he was on the boat with Kerry, why didn't he give us some juicy scenes of two swabbies named John, nose to nose in the hot Southeastern sun?

I mean, they don't even have to be verifiable: as the patented anonymous letter technology availed by many top bloggers has shown, when you're preaching to the choir, no one's going to check your Bible quotations. Besides, having commenced his public career as Nixon's anti-Kerry operative, I can't imagine O'Neill would mind getting his hands a little dirty.

Perhaps O'Neill's dialogue writing is even worse than his polemics, and he is embarrassed by it. Allow me, then, to offer some script doctoring:

Evening on the Mekong. The swift boat PCF-94 drifts silently. On the forward deck, EN3 Washington plays "Purple Haze" on his harmonica. Lt. O'Neill approaches Lt. Kerry on the main deck.

O'NEILL: Skip, what the blazes are we doing adrift at sundown? That jungle is overrun with murdering gooks who'll pick us off for sure!

KERRY: (lighting a joint) Mellow out, O'Neill. I'm just restoring the karmic balance a little. We shoot at them, they shoot at us. Who's to say what's right or wrong, n'cest pas?

O'NEILL: Permission to use my body as a human shield to defend the crew!

KERRY: Do your own thing, man.

O'NEILL races back and forth, the length of the boat, waving his arms.

O'NEILL: When I'm running this ship, things will be different!

KERRY: Damn straight -- I'll be eating foie gras with Bill Paley!

I got a million of 'em, hot cha cha cha cha! Just make the check out to "cash"; plausible deniability is everything in this business.