Other than that, Madame de Pompadour, how did you enjoy the reign?
There is a lot to like on the new Regina Spektor, but I want each and every one of you to know that whenever I have occasion to refer to “Samson” (and I will; oh, yes, I will), ever and always henceforth I would have you understand I mean the “Samson” one hears on Songs and never in a million years the “Samson” one finds on Begin to Hope.
Porch, with occasional rainbow.
Scott McCloud was here on Sunday. Fun was had.
Signs and wonders.
The Exodus Inward has ended, it seems.
Apparently, I’m waiting for something.
Though I know not what. —Y’all see anything likely, let me know, okay?
How terribly civil.
Colleen Holmes, a stay-at-home mother in Portland, Ore., reported an exchange with a Verizon Wireless customer agent that illustrated not only the dismay some Americans feel about the newly disclosed domestic surveillance but also the fear of terrorism that, for many, more than justifies the program.
Holmes said she was so angry about reports that the government was collecting telephone calling records on millions of Americans that she called Verizon Wireless to explore canceling her service and switching to Qwest.
“It’s your constitutional right to voice your opinion,” she quoted the customer service agent as having told her. “If you want planes to fly into your building . . . “
Hey, Verizon? Go fuck yourself.
Monkeys and Wolves and termites, oh my!
The Known World is back from database hell. (For those interested in such things, of course.)
“...an awfully big adventure.”
Belle has been paying more attention to the Fighting Keebees than I have; she’s found they’ve gone straight from singing “Over There” to playing “Waltzing Matilda.” She quotes a chickenhawk auxiliary:
I think [Tapscott, Morrissey, and Bainbridge] may be suffering some variant of PTSD, worn down by defending difficult positions at the forefront of the battle against irredentist [sic] Democrats in Congress and their fifth-column [sic] in the media.
Which is, itself, enough to send Kieran Healy shrieking for a bottle of Sorkin.
You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that blog. You need me on that blog.
But it’s Bruce Baugh with the piercing insight that once and for all demolishes the meme: oh, I see. Oh, I get it.
Talking with Mom and Dad about their personal histories led me to this association: what the war party bloggers have done is recreate the experience of being a child in World War II. They write patriotic essays and make patriotic collages, and get pats on the head and congratulations from the authorities. They watch diligently for the mutant, I mean, for the subversive among us, and help maintain the proper atmosphere of combined courage and vigilance. They are not expected to manage the family books, nor invited into discussion of the nitty-gritty, and it seldom occurs to them that there’s even a possibility there—that’s for the grown-ups, and rightly so.
Salad days.
Yes, I know the Online Integrity signing statement is nothing more than a cudgel wielded by some particularly witless hypocrites, but nonetheless, I must take exception to Chris Bowers’ seemingly sensible initial reaction. “In 2006,” he says,
I have no plans to steal candy from children, or to take money from the collection plate at church. I do not plan to spit on people I pass on the sidewalk, nor do I plan to set fire to a school. I have no intention of committing insurance fraud, insider trading, bank robbery, sexual assault, murder, or genocide. I do not plan on doing any of these things, because I think they are ethically wrong. I also do not plan to sign a pledge indicating that I am not going to do any of these things.
Perhaps; perhaps. But: back in the late ’80s, tail-end of the Reagan years, orientation week or somesuch at Oberlin, and various student groups are proselytizing from card-table pulpits outside Wilder. And if I tell you no one would ever have been so tub-thumpingly stupid as to set up an affirmative action bake sale back then, well, maybe you’ll see where I’m going, but maybe not. —One of the organizations was of course Amnesty International, and one of the buttons they had for anyone to pick up and pin to their jacket (for this was the ’80s, after all) was a red one, I think, that said in big bold white block letters:
STOP TORTURE
And my friend’s rolling her eyes at this, my friend who’s written more than her share of letters to political prisoners. “Oh, that’s brave,” she says. “What, we’re celebrating basic human decency now? You really think someone’s ever going to come up and see that button and say to you, no, no, we need to torture more—”
(Ah, but Michelle Malkin was somewhere in that crowd. So you never know. —Even then, we never knew.)
It takes a nation of millions to hold us back.
Jared’s story illustrates a growing national problem as the military faces increasing pressure to hit recruiting targets during an unpopular war.
Tracking by the Pentagon shows that complaints about recruiting improprieties are on pace to approach record highs set in 2003 and 2004. The active Army and the Reserve missed recruiting targets last year, and reports of recruiting abuses continue from across the country.
A family in Ohio reported that its mentally ill son was signed up, despite rules banning such enlistments and the fact that records about his illness were readily available.
In Houston, a recruiter warned a potential enlistee that if he backed out of a meeting he would be arrested.
And in Colorado, a high school student working undercover told recruiters he had dropped out and had a drug problem. The recruiter told the boy to fake a diploma and buy a product to help him beat a drug test.
Violations such as these forced the Army to halt recruiting for a day last May so recruiters could be retrained and reminded of the job’s ethical requirements.
The Portland Army Recruiting Battalion Headquarters opened its investigation into Jared’s case last week after his parents called The Oregonian and the newspaper began asking questions about his enlistment.
He’s an autistic 18-year-old who didn’t even know a war was going on in Iraq.
“When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ “ said Paul Guinther, Jared’s father. “I told my wife not to worry about it. They’re not going to take anybody in the service who’s autistic.”
But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army’s most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.
Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared’s disability, which should have made him ineligible for service.
He won’t be going, thanks to the Oregonian.
On Tuesday, a reporter visited the U.S. Army Recruiting Station at the Eastport Plaza Shopping Center, where Velasco said he had not been told about Jared’s autism.
“Cpl. Ansley is Guinther’s recruiter,” he said. “I was unaware of any type of autism or anything like that.”
Velasco initially denied knowing Jared but later said he’d spent a lot of time mentoring him because Jared was going to become a cavalry scout. The job entails “engaging the enemy with anti-armor weapons and scout vehicles,” according to an Army recruiting Web site.
After he had spoken for a few moments, Velasco suddenly grabbed the reporter’s tape recorder and tried to tear out the tape, stopping only after the reporter threatened to call the police.
With the Guinthers’ permission, The Oregonian faxed Jared’s medical records to the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Carlton in Portland, who on Wednesday ordered the investigation.
The Guinthers said that on Tuesday evening, Cpl. Ansley showed up at their door. They said Ansley stated that he would probably lose his job and face dishonorable discharge unless they could stop the newspaper’s story.
Our armed forces are cold-calling schoolkids with leads from No Child Left Behind red tape and county fair honeypots, under such ferocious pressure to put boots on the ground that Corporal Ansley’s put his career in the shitter for one more dubious checkmark in his ledger. —Yes, I’m asking for sympathy for this particular devil. After all, the consensus among the few who still support this war is that we aren’t fighting hard enough. 110% just won’t cut it, goddammit!
Can you even begin to imagine what it felt like, to realize what he’d done? Realize the line he’d crossed? Feel it go so searingly wrong that he tried to wrestle the tape out of the reporter’s recorder?
(Perhaps I have it wrong. Perhaps it was with a profound sense of entitlement that he went to the Guinthers’ door, cap in hand, to beg for his career; extremism in the defense, and all that, and why should I lose my job over your kid’s decision? —Perhaps. But I do try to see the best in people, when I can.)
—Meanwhile? Recruiting’s up up up for the Fighting Keebees. Not even two weeks, and they’ve got 300 recruits and counting!
Soar, you mighty chickenhawk. Soar.
Neither the first word nor the last on profanity, disputation, anger, and civility for bloggers.
The Dragonlord held the blade up, and said, “I was given this weapon of my father, you know.” He studied its length critically. “It is called Reason, because my father always believed in the power of reasoned argument. And yours?”
“From my mother. She found it in the armory when I was very young, and it is one of the last weapons made by Ruthkor and Daughters before their business failed. It is the style my father has always preferred: light and quick, to strike like a snake. I call it Wit’s End.”
“Wit’s End? Why?”
“Well, for much the same reason that yours is Reason.”
Piro turned it in his hand, observing the blade—slender but strong, and the elegant curve of the bell guard. Then he turned to Kytraan and said, “May Reason triumph.”
“It always does, at the end of the day,” said Kytraan, smiling. “And as for you, well, you will always have a resort when you are at your wit’s end.”
“Indeed,” said Piro with a smile, as they waited for the assault to commence.
—Steven Brust, The Viscount of Adrilankha
Things you did not know you knew.
No matter who you are, you (yes, you; even you) are a better writer than Tom Cruise.
Or is it the other way round?
Richard Thompson is the Eddie Campbell of pop music.
Futurama Battlestar.
How could you not share something like this?
(Oh, there’s more.)
Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.
Kids these days, they have it so easy. Why, Michael O’Donoghue had to mock My Lai and savage Laraine Newman and make the Mormon Tabernacle choir scream in agony and die of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, obscure and half-remembered, to soldier through the sort of shocked silences Stephen Colbert got just by standing up in front of the president and the press and telling the fucking truth. —What does it mean that it isn’t our journalists anymore but our comedians who afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted? Pretty much what it always has, I guess. At least someone’s making an effort.
What do Philip K. Dick, priestly ephebophilia, Knopf, and Gay Talese’s 50 pairs of hand-lasted shoes have in common?
They’re John Crowley’s suggested interests for Thomas Disch’s brand-new LiveJournal.
First, they win. Then we attack them. Then we laugh at them. Then we ignore them…
My sweet suffering Christ, they’re playing the role of the unjustly oppressed right to the bitter hilt. That right there above, ladies and gentlemen, is an attempt by the supporters of preemptive war, the apologists for torture, the real men who go to Caracas, to reclaim the word “chickenhawk.” Maybe white boy can’t say “nigga,” but that is finally once and for all okay: he can now bellow “My Yellaphant!” with pride.
(Cap’n Ed even went the “Webster’s defines ‘chickenhawk’ as” route:
When we looked into it, it turns out that the chicken hawk is a pretty impressive predator. It’s the largest of its family. This species vigorously defends its territory, getting even more aggressive when the conditions get harshest. It adapts to all climates. Most impressively, it feeds on chickens, mice, and rats.
Make of that what you will.
(Well. I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl, or a mighty fascist-looking eagle displayed on a field of gules, you eliminationist twerp.)
