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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOMAGE TO CNN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See how it works?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Officer, this man is dead!

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

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

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

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

But the best is this record review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You think Danny DeVito's up for another sitcom?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought Brits were supposed to appreciate drollery, what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations all around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NO SATIRE, PLEASE, WE'RE MINNESOTAN. James Lileks, a huge Simpsons fan since time immemorial, slags the most recent episode. Key complaint: you can't make fun of British people because the Brits are our allies. To make his point, he invents a guy who can see into the future, and places him at the original Simpsons story conference (a device I thought went out with old krauts in Tyrolean hats muttering "This Hitler will be the end of Germany, mark my words"):

"...Well, I'm just thinking -- say we're at war in a year, with Iraq, okay? Britain would be our closest ally, and it's quite likely we'll be hearing all sorts of stories about battlefield valor, as well as casualties. This line is going to look really stupid. I mean, these guys were there for us in the Afghan thing just a few months ago. The Brits love our show. Why kick them in the yarbles they so obviously possess?"

Got that, America? Stop laughing at Guy Ritchie, Simon Cowell, and the Upper Class Twit of the Year. Willing coalitionists are off-limits! And that goes for Eritrea and Mongolia, too. A list of approved humor targets will be issued by Homeland Security as soon as we figure whether the Solomon Islands are in or out.

Jacked-up prairie pundits, on the other hand, are always good for a larf.

REBUILDING, ALWAYS REBUILDING. I see the Mets stunk up the joint on Opening Day, losing to the Cubs, 15-2. Not a promising start for Glavine (8 hits, 5 runs, less than 4 innings pitched). I was nervous about that trade from the get-go; the Mets seldom acquire big names until they're just about washed up. Atlanta sure didn't fight for him. On the other hand, from all reports Mo Vaughn did not trip over his own big fat ass today, so who knows; this year they could go all the way.

NOONAN: NOW FOR A NICE, HOT SOAK IN THE BLOODBATH. Peggy Noonan tells us that an extended Iraq war will be good for us -- despite the greater loss of life: "Easy means fewer dead and less dread." she admits. "But -- a big if somewhat grim but -- there is some good to be gotten from the long haul."

Chief among Noonan's imagined benefits: "The world will be reminded that America still knows how to suffer." (One pictures America as G. Gordon Liddy, holding its hand over a flame.)

American's fighting men and women -- those who are not killed in this cojones-proving stage of the war -- will also benefit: "They are not going to feel when they return that they got all dressed up and the party was canceled."

I've said this in more entertaining and clever ways before, but this woman is nuts.

DIFFERENT WORLDS. Read the quotations from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Instapundit is using and ask yourself, does she really sound, as he has it, "very, very thin-skinned"?

I think she sounds extremely reasonable, particularly in describing the atmosphere of the program she was on (taken from IP's site):

As I walked in, people in the front rows were already hissing and hooting to undermine me. Geoff Hoon got massive applause immediately afterwards. Obviously delighted, he looked 10 years younger suddenly. . . .

Now I think Question Time has become much better since it started to allow more assertive challenges from audience members -- the old reverence has gone and an excellent thing too. Panellists should be able to deal with the cut and thrust of hot exchanges. But when it tips over into the Jerry Springer mode the programme loses its stature...

It's interesting that Instapundit chose what to quote, and what he posts still does not support his characterization of Alibhai-Brown (to whom he refers as "Ms. Brown" -- bwa ha ha! Them's some funny right-wing yuks!)

Increasingly we live in different worlds, the left and the right: we haven't spoken the same language for some time, but now, we don't even seem to read the same language.

OI'M A YANKEE-BLEEDIN'-DOODLE-DANDY, MATE! Andrew Sullivan's a piece of work, isn't he? Today he's calling out traitors again. In his current dishonor roll, he equates Nicholas de Genova (whose comments at Columbia are, if reported correctly, genuinely anti-American) with The New York Times.

Let's see. De Genova wished for a million Mogadishus. The Times reports news comprehensively, and has never, to my knowledge, wished aloud that Saddam would win so much as a battle. The paper's headline today reads, "Infantry Attacks Baghdad Defense With First Probes" -- subheads: "Slower Pace, Not a Pause," "Armor Advancing," and "Army and Marines Take on Republican Guard to Shape Big Fight." Not a Mogadishu in sight.

Yet Sullivan characterizes this as "a paper whose editors have already assumed -- or can barely conceal the conjecture -- that the war is lost

Yeah, if they were real Americans, they'd be running New York Post-style "Wipeout!" headlines, not this nuanced shit.

The Times has about seventy thousand Pulitzers, bureaus in every corner of the world, and a reportorial and editorial staff that is the envy of every newsgathering organization on the planet. Sullivan ceaselessly complains that they aren't giving him gigs. Bias may not be the reason, Andy.

PUT IN MY PLACE. Sasha & Andrew's Roundtable pointed to this "Which Band Member Are You?" quiz, so I went and took it. The result you see here. I started out as a guitarist and lead singer, but the past few years of holding down the bottom for Lach have apparently mutated my personality. (It's easy for anyone familiar with musicians, or musician jokes, to see which way the test responses would lead, and I must say that had I taken the quiz in my chandelier-swinging six-string days, I certainly would have obtained a different result.)

Like Peter Boyle said in Taxi Driver, a man does a thing and then he becomes what he does. I'm not sure I believe in destiny, but today more than yesterday I do believe in habit.

TRICKLE-DOWN DIVISIVENESS. Fight the real enemy, cries Andrew Sullivan: "The day of reckoning is not just coming for Saddam Hussein. It's coming for the anti-war movement."

Further down, Sullivan advises on "what the anti-war movement must do now if it is to regain credibility." If his ultimate goal is to give millions of his fellow Americans the Saddam Hussein treatment, why would they listen to him?

In Saturday's New York Post, Adam Brodsky writes, "When the big bombs went off in Baghdad on the first night of this war, I felt like beating my chest." He explains: "It tells the world -- in the only language it understands -- that America will defend itself." (emphasis mine)

Intelligent people can disagree about the war on Iraq, but in the war of a handful of American conservatives against pretty much everyone else on the planet, it would appear the sides have been chosen for us. "With us or against us" is having a most ominous trickle-down effect.

THAT TODDLIN' TOWN. My post on Chicago at the Alicublog Archive (soon to be a major motion picture, released directly to Super-8) prompted this response from my filmmaker buddy Steve Baker of Dallas:

I remember being there for a few weeks in the late '70s. I stayed at the
downtown residential "Y" for $4 a night. Very low-budget tourist wanderings
on my part: jazz bars, Polish restaurants, earnest theater, Heileman Old
Style on tap everywhere (pretty shitty beer, actually), and just taking up
the streets and skyline and lake.

I had a feeling that I could like it there very much.

Here in Dallas, a bar opened up recently, calling itself, "The Corner Tap,"
with a subtitle yet: "A Chicago-Style Neighborhood Bar." So with a certain
wary nostalgia, I entered.

Inside, I found a decor that was heavy on neon, post-industrial metal and
glass, with some misplaced retro lamp fixtures that looked purloined from
TGI Friday's. The joint was fairly crowded with a largely yupp-ified bunch,
so I pushed my way to the overly-gelled blonde barkeep, and asked him: "So
what's about this place that makes it 'a Chicago-style' bar?"

"Damned if I know," he shrugged.

A NIGHT ON THE TOWN. We have a "Summer of Sam" dog in our little corner of Williamsburg. (I refer to the dog whose ceaseless barking helped drive David Berkowitz to serial murder, at least in the Spike Lee movie.) At odd times of day or night this animal delivers a series of short, outraged barks that can go on for hours without variation in pitch or volume. The other night he went at it for some time till something went off that sounded like a BB-gun shot and he fell silent. I wondered if maybe that was the end of him.

The dog was still quiet late Saturday night when I went to play bass with the band at some new club in Manhattan. I had to take an amp -- a Randall Jaguar, borrowed months ago when my own rig began to blow farts and I couldn't pay to fix it (still can't) -- and, being hobbled by a sinus infection, eschewed the subway and hauled it in a livery car. I knew, by an instinct honed over long years of rock experience, that my pay from the show wouldn't cover the cost of the ride. It made me think of Chuck Berry in "American Hot Wax," when Alan Freed told him that the payroll for the performance he was about to give had vanished. "Well, rock 'n' roll's been good to me," said Berry, "I guess I'll do this one for rock 'n' roll!" (In reality, of course, Berry always counted out his bread, and probably checked each bill under a blacklight, before setting foot on stage.)

As I walked into the club, a gaggle of young women in downtown nightwear (all accessorized with noteworthy handbags) marched out of it, one of them announcing, "It's just too early! We can come back later!" The place turned out to be a former restaurant, gutted but not appreciably refurbished save for a lacquered little bar. Track lights were screwed into a scarred grey ceiling, and the bands set up at the far end of the filthy, checkered linoleum floor. A handful of people disconsolately wandered the darkened space. Punk and garage tunes played on the crummy sound system. It was like some of the old places I'd played, except the beers cost six dollars and no one seemed happy to be there.

We bashed out a set. I couldn't use my compressor because there weren't enough electrical outlets. I cranked my amp and made do. The bass drum of the small, borrowed kit Billy was beating was inaudible. There were no stage monitors. Lach's guitar sounded like a mandolin run through a boombox. We played, as had the Pinball Wizard, by sense of smell. Nonetheless we found a few grooves and I was drenched in sweat halfway through. But my mind wandered: Too much treble? Somebody's trying to dance, maybe I should push the beat -- too late, they stopped. I wish I'd taken a longer nap. Is this the thousandth show of my "career" yet? Will balloons fall from the ceiling if it is?

The club didn't pay us. Lach tried to slip me a few bucks, but I demurred. In these situations the high road is the only path that bypasses self-disgust.

Just as we were leaving a very tall woman took the dancefloor and jacked her body to "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place." She wore black hightops, black jeans, black t-shirt and black leather jacket; her hair was dyed black and matted and her pale face was kind and tired. Her jeans rode down on her ample hips a bit, displaying a gentle roll of fat. She reminded me of a girl I used to play music with years and years ago. She lived at Westbeth with her father. She was poetic and punkrock and every time I left her place after rehearsal I kissed her goodnight and she was always reclining and soft-featured when I did, but I only kissed her and took off, except for one time at a party, and I didn't see after that except one time years later, when we ran into each other in the waiting room of a discount psychotherapy place where we were both seeing shrinks, and she had several thin scars across both her arms.

I could easily have crashed when I got back home but I had a promise to keep. Earlier that evening I'd run into an old friend at the laundromat, and he'd told me that tonight was the last night of the Right Bank, a venerable bar at which I'd played back in the day. He'd said I should drop by, however late -- and do you know, as old as the claim of the place was on me, I felt it still. So I washed my face and wandered out.

The Right Bank was emptying out when I got there. Those who remained were of a familiar sort -- young hipsters in rockstar jerseys and flared denim jeans, older demimonders in eccentric hats, a cute and popular bartender in a short, polka-dotted vintage dress and dreadlocks and tattoos who was cheerful and theatrical with everyone and was like that all the time, I guessed, except for the hours and days when she could do nothing but cry and take drugs. The few people I knew talked to me about the things they were doing these days. One was doing campy plays in outlying districts of Los Angeles and working her connections to get an advice column in one of the New York papers -- "because the younger people don't know how to be fabulous," she told me as her boyfriend, an apparently recent college grad, buried his face in her neck. "Like for example, they don't know how that you should wear a big hat. There's a new editor at the New York Press, they were snarky for a while. I want to write about how young people try to take over your personality, like in 'All About Eve,' except for real. Do you know what I mean?" That was the only time she, or anyone else there, asked for my response to anything. The room was like a hangar in which small, brightly-colored egoes hovered.

When I got back to my apartment that dog was barking again.

FUNNY OLD WORLD: "Variety reported that [Michael] Moore is working out a deal with Mel Gibson's production company, Icon Productions, to finance 'Fahrenheit 911.'" -- UPI.

There's a pre-production meeting I'd like to attend:

So ya see, Mr. Gibson, Bush is just as much a terrorist as Bin Laden!

I dunno, Mike... maybe it'll make more sense to me in Aramaic!

DOES THIS WORK?

UPDATE: Apparently not. I was trying out enetation's comments feature. Help!

FEELING TOO HAPPY? Here's something to bring you right down from the "World Briefing" section of the New York Times:

Clocks in Israel were moved ahead one hour this morning for the country's version of daylight saving time. But clocks in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip stayed in standard time. Since 1987, the Palestinians have refused to change their clocks at the same time as the Israelis.

An old item at the Darwin Times says that this issue actually came up in 1999, when "Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers." (According to WebExhibits, the Israels decide each year when they'll make their change.) "Palestinians refused to live on 'Zionist Time.' Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued..."

The Middle East is so fucked, we can't even get these guys to agree what time it is.

DEAR HEARTS & GENTLE PEOPLE: I just got a very nice note from an ideological adversary. That's always disconcerting, as it takes some of the pleasure out of my bedtime fantasies, in which all enemies of freedom roast in Hell.

One of the sweetest people I ever met is now a pretty big-time right-wing writer. I haven't seen him in years, but back in the day he was very civil and patient with my halting attempts to think and speak on politics.

I sometimes think I should be more like that here. And that may be why I've been picking mainly on the blogospheric big boys lately. In addition to being insufferably jacked-up blowhards ("Indeed," indeed!), they're always accusing me and my buddies of loving Saddam, hating America, and murder. Fuck them.

But if I find a new kid on the block talking nonsense, I'll make a point of being sweet reason itself. Till I get called "idiotarian" or "traitor" or such like. Then all bets are off.

DEATH SQUADS II: Just noticed this at Lileks -- there's a picture Salam Pax posted of "the building he says gives him Internet access."

So maybe we haven't heard from SP because someone noticed, and blew it up.

Professor Reynolds! Assemble some of your pro-war protestors outside Jasperwood and yell, "Shame! Shame!"

DEATH SQUADS. I see Instapundit is poised to blame the BBC if anti-Saddam Iraqi blogger Salam Pax is, or has been, killed. Help me out here. SP has been covered to death (so to speak) in the Blogosphere for weeks -- I first heard of him via Lileks. As for his BBC coverage, I have seen only this report, and it had nothing on the guy that I hadn't already read in weblogs.

How then is his peril the Beeb's fault? Maybe there was a BBC broadcast at some point containing something like, "Salam Pax, of 23 Jihad Lane, who likes to take walks, unarmed, around 5 p.m. every weekday..." but I haven't seen it.

It seems very odd that the blogbrethren, who are always bragging about their reach and effectiveness, now claim their extensive coverage of Salam Pax constituted a secret shared by discreet friends until Big Media deigned to notice.

At least Sgt. Stryker should be happy.

FEW LAUGHS GOOD, FEWER LAUGHS BETTER! For a satire site, the Onion is pretty even-handed about its political targets -- why, Andrew Sullivan cherry-picks gags from it for his winger readership all the time. But the war seems to have challenged them in this regard, as one can only make so many jokes about stupid protestors and remain hilarious. So the Onion's recent Iraq-related spread, "Operation Piss Off the Planet," has a lot of items that would seem to mock the Bush agenda.

Your basic Onion fan (like this pro-war but reasonable fellow) says that's life and enjoys the jokes. But someone apparently felt the need to redress the balance, and created his own, more conservatively-correct version called The Lemon -- at least, that's the only excuse I can see for aping the format but, instead of parodying the site (as Mad did), just making sure that most of the jokes were about stupid protestors. (Sample headlines: "FOX news condemned for 'Flagrant centrist bias'" and "Saddam praises news coverage of war"). The obligatory Glenn Reynolds shout-out has followed.

As I've written elsewhere, the Right wants American culture and it wants it bad. I would suggest that doing conservative versions of pre-existing cultural artifacts is not the way to go about it -- just as the efforts of some well-meaning folks to find the "liberal Rush Limbaugh" are equally doomed. Culture is made by artists, not rip-off artists.

I expect we'll see an uptick in stridency all across the board as things get uglier here in Nuthouse America. Say, that was pretty strident in itself. See?

ANOTHER DAY IN ANDYLAND: Iraqi forces are fighting hard in Najaf, and Andrew Sullivan observes: "When you're cornered, this is how you fight. But it is also reminiscent of al Qaeda and other Islamist fanatics. The virus has spread far and wide."

Huh? Their country's been invaded, they fight back hard. This is "reminscent" of any army in the same situation.

Pointing out such non-sequiturs these days invites traitor-treatment, which may be why people generally leave them alone. Here's why I can't do that: I notice that, having declared themselves keepers of the Orwell legacy (to throw us off the scent, one imagines), conservatives are using the fog of war as a cover for Orwellian doublethink of the sort I just mentioned. I think it's important to keep a record of this activity -- so that, in days to come, when these guys present even greater offenses to logic as solid fact, and we are inclined to ask ourselves, "Is the world going mad, or is it just me?" we can at least follow the pixel trail back and say, oh, right, this didn't happen overnight -- they've been softening up reality for some time now; if one weren't paying attention, one would not even notice.

Then we can sleep more comfortably in our cells.

OLD SCHOOL: I see Senator Moynihan is dead. Years ago I read an interview with him in Leaders magazine. The interviewer noted that Americans did not have long historical memories -- which observation seemed an cue for the famously tweedy Senator to lament our philistine ahistoricism. But Moynihan said, "That's right, and a good thing, too!" He explained with an anecdote: while touring Northern Ireland, he'd seen spray-painted across a wall the words "REMEMBER 1689!" This is the date of the Siege of Londonderry, an event significant in the endless sectarian struggles of Ireland. That some "street urchin," said Moynihan, could call this date to mind was not a sign of enlightenment, but of bondage to ancient grudges, and he for one was glad that this was much less the case with Americans.

I admire the subtlety of his reasoning. I also admire that he came from Hell's Kitchen but did not, as so many politicians do, exploit his proletarian roots by presenting himself as belly-scratching "man of the people." He wore nice suits and bow ties and spoke like a professor, albeit a jolly, bibulous one. It is amazing to contemplate that voters anywhere at any time would approve a candidate so clearly their intellectual superior. At the same time, he was as capable of muscling pork-barrel projects (like the planned Penn Station revival) through Congress as any dirty-fingernails type.

He was of the old school -- self-invented, but to his own specifications, not those of an image consultant. His kind gets rarer every day.