Roz Kaveney knew Christopher Hitchens. And you, sir—
Oh, my. Here’s Andrew Sullivan quoting Christopher Hitchens, holding forth in Scarborough Country last night on the subject of Michael Moore:
But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.
And here’s what Roz has to say about that:
This is, after all, a charming effete fop with an interest in alcohol who has become the house ex-lefty of a lot of American right-wingers who think that all European intellectuals are self-hating, effete wits.
Chin-chin.
Brownsark.
From the latest op-ed by Tony Blankley, editorial page editor for that “newspaper,” the Washington Times:
We have the strength—military, economic, cultural, diplomatic, (dare I include the strength of our religious faith, also?)—to persist around the world unto victory—for generations if necessary.
But all this potential capacity for victory can only be brought into full being by a sustained act of collective will. It is heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president’s political and media opposition want the president’s defeat more than America’s victory. But that is the price we must pay for living in a free country. (Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently—although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America.)
Why on earth would this be the case, Mr. Blankley? Will the next terrorist attack be a rewriting of the constitution?
(More here and here. Turn on the lights and scatter the cockroaches. —My God, you can almost hear the bated breath, you can almost smell the expectant sweat. One more terrorist attack will show you. The gloves will finally be off! We can at last do what must be done! Gloriosky, God in heaven, bring it on!)
Rules of order.
One thing I’ll never understand—the reason why some people think this sort of thing:
Midshipmen and cadets are expected to conduct themselves as gentlemen at all times—on or off the dance floor. Displays of affection on the dance floor are not tolerated, and Hop Committee members will ask those who violate courtesies to leave the hop. Members of the Hop Committee at the Coast Guard and Naval Academies are distinguished by their gold aiguillettes; at the Air Force Academy by silver aiguillettes; at West Point by red sashes. They have the authority to enforce regulations.
You will never leave your drag sitting alone, or embarrass her with boisterous conduct. Never leave her in mid-floor. If an occasion arises when you must leave, you should leave her with a group before excusing yourself. If you are not adept at certain steps, such as in the more intricate dances, you may suggest “waiting this one out.”
However, since it is the gentleman who invites the lady to dance, it is up to her to suggest that you stop. She might say, “Shall we rest a moment?” or “Please, let’s have some punch.” Otherwise, you should dance indefinitely (perhaps this is the origin of the term “dragging!”).
—or this:
At no time does any individual leave more than three cards. (For example, a husband and a wife may leave a total of six cards at one call.) You will remember that a man calls on adults, man or woman, but that a civilian woman only calls on another woman.
A military woman calls as an officer and therefore calls on the officials for whom a call is regularly required.
The following rules apply to the individual cards a husband and wife leave:
- When calling on a senior officer and his wife—2 officer cards and 1 “Mrs.” card.
- When calling on a senior officer and his wife, and his mother—3 officer cards and 2 “Mrs.” cards.
- When calling on a senior officer, his wife, his mother, and his father—3 officer cards and 2 “Mrs.” cards.
- When calling on a senior officer, his wife, his mother, his mother-in-law, and adult daughter—3 officer cards and 3 “Mrs.” cards.
When a husband and wife use “joint” calling cards (Lieutenant and Mrs. John Smith Jones), these rules apply:
- When calling on a senior officer and his wife, leave—1 officer card and 1 joint card.
- Cards in addition to joint cards are left in accordance with the general rules given for individual cards.
—or even this:
No one likes to apologize, but apologies are in order when:
- You are late at a luncheon or dinner party—or any social occasion such as a reception where the receiving line has already broken up. Then you go directly to the hostess and briefly apologize.
- The host and hostess have waited for your arrival at a luncheon or dinner party, but have not gone into the dining room. Then you apologize and tell them why you are late—and the reason must be excellent!
- You fail to keep an appointment. You should telephone or write a brief note, explaining your failure to keep the appointment—and again, the reason must be a good one.
- You cannot grant a request. In this case you must not only give your regrets, but if possible add some explanation, such as, “I’m sorry, but due to the great sentimental value attached to the object, I can’t lend it for the exhibition, etc., etc.”
- You break or damage something. You must attempt to replace the article exactly, but if you cannot, then send flowers with your calling card. You should, of course, state on the card that you are sorry concerning the mishap.
—is a necessary precondition for this:
- You have caused harm, or have hurt someone needlessly, or through carelessness. In this case you must do more than apologize—you must ask the other person’s forgiveness.
—or sufficient to ensure this:
You must always remember that the word—or signature—of a lady or gentleman is his or her bond. Therefore, think twice before you make promises. Signed to a check your signature means that you stand good for the amount indicated. Signed to the endorsement at the end of an examination it means that you subscribe to the work submitted and that it is your work. Signed to a letter it means that the ideas expressed are your own.
It is of the utmost importance that men and women in the services be honest and direct in all their dealings. Juniors can avoid a great deal of embarrassment by giving a complete but to-the-point answer in replies to questions put by their seniors.
If you are the junior and do not know or cannot give a complete or correct answer, then you should answer only as much of the question as you can without evasion or giving misinformation. An honest “I don’t know, Sir, but I will find out and let you know,” is a better answer than an indirect one that gives misinformation on which your senior may be basing an important decision. An evasive answer might seriously affect your service reputation.
Form and content; style and substance; breeding and manners; nature and nurture. —Etiquette courtesy Captain Brooks J. Harral, USN, and Oretha D. Swartz, Service Etiquette.
A few basic precautions.
Professor DeLong’s father is rattled by seeing his house on the cover of Reason magazine:
The latest issue of Reason magazine arrived in the mail, and the cover causes a jolt. It is an aerial photo of my neighborhood, with my house circled and the legend underneath: “James DeLong: They Know Where You Are!”
DeLong père ends up as sanguine about the database nation as Declan McCullagh, who wrote the article on the upside of data mining that the stunt cover publicizes. But DeLong fils isn’t so sure:
I don’t have settled (or especially informed) views on this, Dad. But I wonder if your first reaction might not have been more accurate. It takes 20 seconds to find and circle a house with a telephone book, a map, and a crayon—at $10 an hour total cost for low-wage labor, that’s six cents an address. Very few people will have an incentive to organize and analyze their data on you at that cost. Those whom you want to send you magazines every month will, but how many others. I think we do have to worry about how governments—future Stasis—will use computers. And there are additional (but far lesser) potential vulnerabilities: weaknesses of the will at the personal or household level that might be exploited. [...]
Sometimes what look like quantitative changes—the falling cost of information processing—make qualitative differences. This may or may not be one of them. But it may be time to start thinking about how one would live in a world in which every conversation (even informal ones with close family members) may be broadcast around the world.
All of which is really just an excuse to cut ’n’ past the lyrics to a delightful song by Momus, written in the headier, happier days of 1997, on this very topic. Ladies and gentlemen, from the exquisite Ping Pong: “The Age of Information.”
This is a public service announcement.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering
The age of information
It’s perfectly safe
If we all take a few basic precautions
May I make some observations?
Axiom 1 for the world we’ve begun:
Your reputation used to depend on
What you concealed
Now it depends on what you reveal
The age of secretive mandarins who creep on heels of tact
Is dead: we are all players now in the great game of fact instead
So since you can’t keep your cards to your chest
I’d suggest you think a few moves ahead
As one does when playing a game of chess
Axiom 2 to make the world new:
Paranoia’s simply a word for seeing things as they are
Act as you wish to be seen to act
Or leave for some other star
Somebody is prying through your files, probably
Somebody’s hand is in your tin of Netscape magic cookies
But relax:
If you’re an interesting person
Morally good in your acts
You have nothing to fear from facts
Axiom 3 for transparency:
In the age of information the only way to hide facts
Is with interpretations
There is no way to stop the free exchange
Of idle speculations
In the days before communication
Privacy meant staying at home
Sitting in the dark with the curtains shut
Unsure whether to answer the phone
But these are different times, now the bottom line
Is that everyone should prepare to be known
Most of your friends will still like you fine
X said to Y what A said to B
B wrote an email and sent it to me
I showed C and C wrote to A:
Flaming World War III
Cut, paste, forward, copy
CC, go with the flow
Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go
Axiom 4 for this world I adore:
Our loyalties should shift in view according to what we know
And who we are speaking to
Once I was loyal to you, and prepared to be against information
Now I am loyal to information, maybe I’m disloyal to you
My loyalty becomes more complex and cubist
With every new fact I learn
It depends who I’m speaking to
And who they speak to in turn
Axiom 5 for information workers who wish to stay alive:
Supply, never withhold, the information requested
With total disregard for interests personal and vested
Chinese whispers was an analogue game
Where the signal degraded from brain to brain
Digital whispers is the same in reverse
The word we spread gets better, not worse
X said to Y what A said to B
B wrote an email and sent it to me
I showed C and C wrote to A:
Flaming World War III
Cut, paste, forward, copy
CC, go with the flow
Our ambition should be to love what we finally know
Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go
Crying in the Wind, by Harold Applebaum.
The soldiers pass, the leaders pass, and war
Becomes a string of dates and foreign names
To feed the young for twenty years. Once more
The tide recedes and man resumes his games
Of blindman’s bluff, the savage make-believe
Of progress, peaceful tongue in cheek. Once more
The rich will prosper and the poor conceive
As each contributes to the common war.
The wise will clamor, as they always do
With warning, reason, truth and sense, but vain
As crying in the wind. A precious few
Will reach the mountains by the time the rain
Begins, and launch their frantic arks to find
That floods are endless and the doves are blind.
Spinooti found it, tucked inside an old Bible.
Mollified, and yet.
Just because I feel some sort of obligation or something: one more Movable Type 3.0 post. —They’ve spoken, after all, and addressed a few of the concerns raised (rather vociferously) over the past couple of days:
- They’ve stripped the “one CPU” limit from the license.
- They count an author (the total number of which is now limited) as anyone who’s logged in within the past 90 days.
- They count a weblog (the total number of which is now limited) as a site visible at a single main URL; therefore, sideblogs set up as “separate” blogs with the software don’t count toward this total.
- They now offer Personal Edition add-ons, which will allow group blogs to purchase a somewhat cheaper personal license and add additional authors at $9.95 a pop.
This mollifies me not a little. I can still run it for free, since I now have “two” blogs, and not “five,” and it’s not inconceivable that I’d scrape together the 70 bucks necessary to upgrade to fully fledged. And the group blogs don’t have to buy the commercial license and trim their mastheads to upgrade the software they’ve been using; even sociology professors and natural philosophers should be able to pony up $12 or $13 a head to blog, right? (Though there’s a quirk in the special pricing: it’s cheaper to buy the middle license for 10 authors and 10 blogs and add on from there, than it is to buy the third license at 13 and 13. That quirk will no longer obtain in the regular pricing.)
But: the personal license at its regular price of 100 bucks is still 30 bucks more than 70, and I’m not necessarily going to upgrade right away. And you still have to be registered with TypeKey to download a free version. And—well, it’s weird. Jay Allen’s point is worth considering: this is called, after all, a “Developer’s Release”; it’s primarily intended for developers to get in early and start hacking together their third-party plug-ins, updating and upgrading to work with 3.0. A general release (it’s then theorized) of 3.0 is still to come. A fine point, but there’s some stuff left out of the equation: I, after all, am not a developer. I’ve already downloaded MT 2.661, so I can ride it out until this (as yet unacknowledged, mind) general release. But if I were just coming into this blogging game, and had heard MT was teh hella best, and went to get the program, I could download the Developer’s Release, or I could—
What?
TypePad, probably. —Not to climb to far out on a limb, but in the absence of clear communications, theory will fester: I think they’re trying to haul their income from one stream bed into another, roomier one with raw muscle power. Little blogs like mine ought to end up on TypePad; power users and “enterprise” folks can beef up the bottom line; de facto resellers like the fine folks over at White Rose can pay up or fall by the wayside. And this is SixApart’s prerogative. (Given the “oh you whining free-software hippies, it’s only 60 bucks for a cab ride, why don’t you just suck it up, you ungrateful internet freeloaders” rhetoric that’s spewing from some quarters, one feels it’s de rigueur to include a standard disclaimer with every post on the subject: “In our wondrous capitalist economy, a software company may charge whatever it bloody well feels like for its proprietary product,” or words to that effect. Also: Saddam is evil; the killing of Nick Berg was deplorable; and courage! Bush is a noodle.) But hauling rather than weaning an income stream from here to there is by its nature disruptive, and Jesus, I’m about to descend into punditry.
Fuck it. I don’t want TypePad; I like Movable Type; I’m not happy about paying $100 for it; there are alternatives out there; I’m going to start shopping around (WordPress and Textpattern, yes, and thanks for the recommendations). And that’s it; I’m spent.
MT 3.0.
Oh, hey, guess I’m sticking with MovableType 2.661 for a bit. —It’s not that I begrudge them their lucre and it’s not that I think software must (necessarily) be free or something like that; it’s just that I’m a cheap bastard. I mean, Jesus H. Christ in a jumped-up sidecar, the price breaks: $69.95 is steep enough, but that’s the introductory price. It jumps to $99.95 at some point after that. —It is still available for free, yes, but you’re limited to three blogs off one installation, and it only looks like I have two blogs running in MT: I actually have five, since three feed sideblogs to the other two.
I think maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and climb under the Textpattern hood to see what’s what.
And you know, the price breaks make even less sense when you consider the ever-growing popularity—and visibility—of group blogs.
Just to expand on the above point: two of the most popular and visible standard-bearers in the ever-growing trend toward group blogs are Crooked Timber and the Panda’s Thumb. Both of them run on MT. Both of them now face the following choice:
- stick with MT 2.661 until the cows come home,
- port their blogging and archives over to a different system, or
- pay $600 now, or $700 later, for software they’ve been using for free, or supporting with donations—
- and even then, the Panda’s Thumb would have to cut loose five authors to fit the top-end restriction. (Should they really be forced to get that Darwinian?)
Yes, SixApart is trying to account for the big companies that are using MT for things quite other than blogging, and that’s fine, go team! But the way they’ve gone about it—distinguishing personal from commercial uses primarily by the number of authors and blogs involved—leaves a big fat slice of their enthusiastic amateur base in the dust. Their prerogative; then, you can toss the baby with the bathwater whenever you want, so long as no literal baby is involved. There’s not a great alternative blogging tool (that I know of) which allows multiple blogs and multiple authors with such ease. Yet. —There will be, soon enough.
Oh, hey, more! Shelley over at Burningbird compiles a list of reasons why, even if I did only have three blogs, I couldn’t use the free MT 3.0: as it currently stands, you have to be registered with TypeKey to download it (which isn’t a prospect that thrills me), and you’re only allowed one installation on one CPU—and I have no idea how that fits with my hosting company. More phone calls and emails with technical support would be called for, with the possibility that I’d have to move everything elsewhere anyway (after further calls with their technical support, etc. etc.). Why hassle? My path is clear: 2.661 > some other solution. What fun!
One last update, and then I’m putting this topic to bed: Dean Peters has some very thoughtful things to say on why, exactly, there’s been such an uproar, and sketches an alternate pricing plan that would have made nary a ripple with me, at least (and not just because it’s cheaper, peanut gallery).
What part of “no” do they not understand?
NORTH: Alan—Alan, for 13 or 14 days now, all we have seen on the front pages of America’s newspapers is a group of obviously twisted young people with leashes and weird sex acts, the kind of thing that you might find on any college campus nowadays, being perpetrated by people in uniform.
—a half dozen of the other.
To which the Pentagon official replied, “You mean the six morons who lost the war?”
—“Iraqi Prisoner Abuse May Undermine War on Terror,” Tom Regan.
Now, really. I know things got a little feisty under Clinton, what with hardly veiled threats from sitting senators, but is this how one ought to refer to Wolfowitz and Feith, Rumsfeld and Cheney, Rice and Bush?
Remember: the military ultimately serves civilian masters. We ask that they serve us; they do what we require. There’s no other way a military force can work in a civil democracy.
A little respect, please.
Maybe you had to be there?
So Morah got shot, see, and ended up dying in Venice’s arms, except it wasn’t really like you’re thinking, they’d just met, and anyway Morah wasn’t really dead, she ended up ghosting into Venice’s head, and maybe it’s because Venice is a powerful yet naïve telepath or maybe it’s because Morah is really a body-hopper and she’s been lying to us all this time, I mean, she is an agent for the Resistance, but I at least am predisposed to trust her if not for the best of reasons, but we’ll get to that, the important thing being that Morah’s now a matrix of data set askew inside Venice’s head, where she can be called up in secret with subvocal whispers, Venice’s own pocket oracle, but nothing more than that really, until Venice interfaced with that ancient computer and something happened which pretty much woke Morah back up again, so she wasn’t just a matrix of information, she was, you know, self aware, and she’d get up in the middle of the night and go walkabout in Venice’s body, which really freaked me out, since I was the Guard, and Venice was my charge, but a couple of tense conversations at gunpoint and we worked it all out because maybe I’m big and maybe I’m stupid and I don’t really remember all that much about myself at all which is why it was Burhan who had to come up with a name for me but I’m not the sort of person to go shooting at just anything that moves unless there’s drugs involved but that’s another story, anyway, after the bit with the baths and the tropical socks and the junkyard SATs which I’ll gloss over we ended up in the city that was under seige from the Madlands which are underneath, except when the Madlands beseige your city it looks a lot more like somebody’s trying to set up an embassy, unless of course the Nemesis of the folks from the Madlands is trying to scotch the whole thing by dressing up in the bodies of the city’s ruling class and working mischief after mischief, and there was the musicbox bomb that Burhan had to defuse, and I keep forgetting that K’ia has the tone plate from that bomb wrapped up in something soft and stuffed at the bottom of her pack, because one of these days she wants to get it up to one of the city ships that fly across the sky and ring it and see what it happens, but I really don’t want to think about that, I’ve got enough to worry about, see, because while we were sorting out the whole Nemesis-necromancer thing I shot the Zoxone of the folks from the Madlands and it wasn’t by accident, and I know I said I don’t shoot just anything that moves, I’m actually very careful about that sort of thing, because before I was a guard I was a soldier, and that sort of thing is what I know how to do and it’s important to do what you know how to do well, but let’s make this long story shorter than it is by leaving out the stuff with the soldiers who were just like me and who let me stand a watch or two at the emergency embassy, which was nice, but the point is at the end of it all the city was in chaos but the castle was still standing and the folks from the Madlands were pretty much okay and the Nemesis was dead dead dead, and we weren’t, only everybody else said Morah was still dead, because she was in Venice’s head and nowhere else, except I didn’t think she was dead, because you can’t talk to dead people, you know, and we’d been talking some when I was standing guard and nobody else was awake, and see the thing is Venice thought maybe the Nemesis wasn’t dead either, and Timbuk who was the one who thought maybe Morah was really a body-hopper also didn’t think the Nemesis was dead, or maybe he was, but see, nobody could talk to the Nemesis, right, so I mean he pretty much had to be dead, was what I thought, and anyway we were headed off elsewhere, we found the Resistance and Morah didn’t want to talk to them since she thought she was dead, too, and there was some more stuff with red dust and giant metal bugs and an ancient city, and the important thing here aside from the fact that we did in the end manage to stop the red dust from swallowing pretty much the entire world is that in the course of fighting off an attack by the soldiers from one of the city ships that fly across the sky I shot one of the soldiers who was doing something to the ancient computer we’d found except Timbuk really wanted him alive and Venice poured one of her potions on him and he wasn’t dead so much anymore except that inside the interface space where Morah didn’t look like she was in Venice’s head because I think when we were in that interface space nobody was in anybody’s head, anyway, Morah was able to race the soldier back to his body and beat him to it and now she had a body and Venice didn’t have anybody in her head except herself and the soldier was dead dead dead, except he was a matrix of data still fixed in his head which was now Morah’s head or at least the head where she was living for the moment, except when we were up at the edge of the Madlands while the rest of them were down inside the Madlands trying to make a copy of a dying village something happened which pretty much woke the soldier back up again, only it turned out that I was the only one who could talk to him, and even though I could see him and get him to feed the gorzah and follow him places where he’d been it turned out that he was in my head now, and I think it was because the Madlands made it happen, I mean I don’t think Morah pushed him, and I did feel responsible because I had shot him, you know, and he didn’t remember where he’d come from, like me, and he wanted to get back there anyway, like I did, but the sort of soldier he’d been had nothing to do with the sort of soldier I’d been, I mean, there’s a reason there’s a Resistance, and anyway I didn’t like him very much, he was supercilious and he called me his jailer like it was my fault, and so it was best for all concerned if we just got him the hell out, even if we didn’t have a body to put him into, because we’d left Morah’s behind way back at the beginning when she got shot and everybody was sure she was dead, so we decided to go deeper down into the Madlands, where Timbuk could lead us maybe to somebody who could maybe help, but Venice, who was pretty sure the Nemsis wasn’t dead, was also pretty sure that the thing I was talking to wasn’t the soldier, but was, instead, the Nemesis, only how on earth could the Nemesis have gotten into my head, you know, it doesn’t make any sense, but anyway we went down into the brightly colored copy of the village that wasn’t dying anymore and from there we got into a boat and we let it take us to the place where the windmills are, because a windmill was drawn on the plaque that we picked at random and stuck into the little frame on the back of the boat, because that’s how the Madlands are, and that’s why they’re down there and the city ships full of soldiers are up there, but anyway we were following the path because it’s very important not to get distracted or rock the boat and you must never, ever leave the path once you’re on it, and when we got to the end of this particular path Timbuk would get word to the folks we’d met earlier, who had been trying to open an embassy to that city, and whose Nemesis we’d killed until he was dead (dead dead), and because of that their Zoxone would come to us and help get the soldier out of my head, only we’d stopped to rest and I said the soldier’s name which I think was the name he’d had before he became a soldier, and he appeared, and everybody could see him now, because we were in the Madlands, which is like I think when we were in the interface space, only we all had our bodies with us, even him, and so K’ia who knows about smells and tastes and blood decided to do an experiment to see if she could tell the difference between me and him since we both smelled the same to her, even though Timbuk who knew the most about the Madlands didn’t think this was such a good idea, but he’s not the sort of person to leap in and say no, he just shook his head, and maybe he would have burned an orange duck again, but Venice, you remember, thought that it was really the Nemesis who was pretending to be the soldier while he bided his time and healed from what we’d done to him back in the city that was being beseiged, and she thought the best way to figure this out for sure (since Nemeses lie if you aren’t careful) would be to surprise him, and so while K’ia was tasting our blood and surrounded by silvery insects and while I was standing there shivering and while Burhan was holding his dog and while Timbuk was tut-tutting the whole thing and while the soldier was standing there shivering Venice drew the Nemesis’s sigil on a piece of paper and when she was finished she showed it to the soldier and the drawing grew claws and leaped after him and they both disappeared into me, because that’s how the Madlands are, and it doesn’t matter anymore if that’s the soldier or the Nemesis and it doesn’t matter if Venice is right or if K’ia is right because it’s damn well the Nemesis in there now and he’s only going to get stronger because a Nemesis draws strength from its nemesand and the Zoxone is on her way—
All of which and more is why I gasped and leaped up from the couch, and it’s why John grinned sheepishly and Jenn put down her pencil and Charles shook his head with that smile and Dawn got that look and Becca outright laughed, because when six different people take up different threads of plot and character like that and under loose direction manage to drop something that big and patterned and meaningful into place without quite knowing that’s what we’d been doing right up until the last minute when it was too late and it all snicked into place, well, it’s as close to magic as I think I’m ever going to get, and it’s why gaming is such an intoxicating pasttime, even if it took us over a year to get this far. —But it’s also why that intoxication is so hard to get across to anybody else, you know? Or maybe you can extrapolate.
You are what you’ve eaten.
More and better elsewhere, and once again I’m tempted to settle down with that translation of Thomas Browne’s Urne Buriall. (How hard could it be to learn Spanish at this stage in the game? And then Browne?)
—At the very least, could somebody bum-rush Anon? Let ’em sleep it off in the gutter.
Me am teh best EVAR! LOL
“Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had,” said Vice President Dick Cheney. “People ought to get off his case and let him do his job.” He “said” this in a prepared statement. It wasn’t shot from the hip at a pool reporter while walking and talking at a Sorkinian clip. He had some time to think about it, is my point, and take into account the stories so far:
They first learned about this when the “courageous” soldier took the pictures to his superiors. And the pictures were all “personal.”
But then stories came out that the pictures were ordered by MI for “intimidation” purposes.
And the ICRC reported it had told the Admin. about these problems months ago.
And it was limited to a handful of “bad apples.” Except the same thing happened in Afghanistan.
And the photos were staged, not “snapshots.”
And they knew something was up in November, but they fixed it. But they were surprised by the allegations in January.
But no one knew about it. But everyone knew about it, because there was a breakdown in command.
But there was no breakdown. And the Geneva Convention has always applied.
Except when it hasn’t.
And we’ve always followed it. Except when we didn’t.
And we don’t abuse prisoners. Except when we do. It’s not “American.” Except it is expressly sanctioned by military regulations. Except it can only be sanctioned by the SoD, because Rumsfeld keeps tight rein on everything.
Except he doesn’t. Because this was authorized in Iraq, not in Washington. Except it couldn’t have been, because Rummy runs a tight ship.
Except he didn’t know. But don’t call it “plausible deniability.” Because there’s a chain of command.
Except Rumsfeld doesn’t know what it is. He only knows about the PR campaign he’s been conducting since these photos went public.
But he isn’t lying. He just doesn’t know anything.
But it’s okay. Because he’s doing a great job.
Even though everything is a shambles.
—We said; they said. I guess, well, shucks. It all remains to be seen, doesn’t it?
(Oh. One last thing: this just doesn’t wash, because it’s pretty much an astoundingly stupid way to deal with narrow roads and macho bus drivers. Thank you. That is all.)
Rage.
At the moment. The current juncture. This place where we’ve found ourselves. My fingers get all tangled up in the keys and when I pound the desk in frustration it makes an ominous croak. I can speak well enough, though I have to make an effort to keep my voice down and all my jokes are brittle and if I’ve snapped at you in the past few days, it’s not your fault, and I am sorry. Sometimes my hands curl into fists when I’m not looking. It’s not that I really want to hit anybody because I’ve never hit anybody in my life but I want to hit somebody only that wouldn’t do any good, not any good at all. And it’s not the people who did the things they’ve done that I want to hit. It’s the people who say that what was done was okay, was fine, was what we’d all do anyway, was the American way, was gay feminist pornography, was what has to be done to get anywhere in this world, was nothing more than they deserved, was no big deal, was free speech. And I want to call them monsters because they are saying monstrous things but I can’t call them monsters. I can’t hit them. I can’t snap a baton against the backs of their knees and force them to kneel in fear before a snarling dog for the horrible things they’ve said, that they pretend I ought to believe. I can’t put hoods over their heads to shut them up. I can’t hit them. I can’t pretend I am better than this by pretending they are less than human because that’s how we get into these messes in the first place. But it is up to us to do something: God is away on business, and reason’s been asleep for four years or more, and every time they open their mouths monsters leap from their tongues and, and I can’t keep up, my arms won’t reach. Somebody’s locked up all the soapboxes. And just when I need my words the most to let the 300 or so people who come by here know that I feel just as outraged as they do themselves—
I am ashamed. I am appalled. I can’t countenance a country that happily lets the likes of Rush Limbaugh set the moral tone, and cheerfully pretends that James Inhofe adequately represents them. I can’t imagine a country that would so blithely condone the manifest incompetency of the people who claim to govern us. I can’t understand why we aren’t in the streets right now with torches and pitchforks, howling.
(Or maybe hide under the covers with my books and my cats and my wife until it all Goes Away in November when we vote them all out of office and we wake up from this horrible dream and everyone understands it was all a terrible misunderstanding and all the dead people stand up smiling and they apologize sweetly for playing such an awful trick on us but it’s over now and then there is a parade.)
My heart races sometimes and the corners of my eyes get wet and I feel that choke in the back of my throat and I wonder why until I remember and then my stomach drops. My hands curl into fists when I’m not looking but there are no holes in the wall. Yet.
Context.
I’m getting barraged by search requests for Limbaugh + “blow off some steam.” And I know what they’re looking for. But see: there’s two basic reasons why someone might Google up that horror.
I wish to God I knew which was in the lead.
—Bonus! For those of us still with heads atop our necks, here’s the kicker designed to blow them up once and for all. Ready? No, seriously. You have to fasten your seatbelts and hold onto your hats and kiss your socks goodbye on this one, because you won’t be picking them up until sometime next week. So when I say ready, I mean you best be motherfuckin’ ready, you hear me? Because I’m about to let World o’ Crap call George Neumayr up to the mike, and when he opens his mouth, there’s no turning back. Here he comes. Last chance. Are. You. Ready?
And why is the behavior depicted in the photos so appalling to liberals? If the behavior had been voluntary, liberals would call it free speech.
No one truly sensitive can hurt another human being.
I stood, stand, alone.
Hee. —Oh, one can, if one is forced, retreat behind the subtitle of what one is about (Imagining Fowles); one can point out that to dismiss an author utterly on the basis of their adolescent journals is as wrong-headed as to dismiss a neighborhood utterly because the houses are peeling and the children playing in the street are dirty; one should perhaps note that The Magus, for instance, isn’t at all important or good or even worthwhile for the reasons the book jacket says (then, what book is? —It would take too long to get into: suffice it to say that the Magus is only the first of the Major Arcana), and Fowles was an adolescent for such a terribly long time; even so, he is the sort of author that the world is better off having had.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a motherload of schadenfreude in Ian Sansom’s review of John Fowles: The Journals (and, almost incidentally, Eileen Warburton’s John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds)—
Basically, according to Fowles, everyone else is totally crap: useless, rubbish, a waste of time and not worth bothering about. He starts with his parents, as is traditional, and moves on from there. The parent-hate stuff is more Mole than Freud – not so much traumatising primal scene as terribly noisy hoovering. They tidy up, your mum and dad. ‘Spasm of hate. Trying to listen to Mozart 465 Quartet, when M[other] seems, almost deliberately, to spoil it.’ Every schoolboy knows that parents have no taste, but Fowles remains a pitiless adolescent into adulthood. ‘A new view on my parents, which embraces all their faults – or better, the qualities they lack. They have no sense of style. They can’t tell a stylish jug from a pretty jug, they don’t feel the style of things, of a book, of a piece of music, of a meal, of a flavouring, of life.’ ‘For some time,’ he concludes, ‘I feel willingly that I could like killing them.’ He does his best to analyse his parents’ apparent failings, compared to his own obvious excellence, and this is what he comes up with: ‘The difference in environmental norms accounts for much – a boarding-school, an officers’ mess, a university, all have led me into a much wider plane than 25 rather introvert years in the same quiet household, where the class has slipped.’ All that education didn’t go to waste, then. His poor sister, who is younger than him and who can therefore never catch up, comes off even worse: ‘Hazel is an interesting test-object for egotism. Financially it is to my benefit that she should not exist . . . She merely seems like a small pet.’
Nicholas Urfe, it seems, learned nothing. —Via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift.
Comics, juxtaposed.
First, there’s Bill Mudron doing Pan.
Then, there’s Chris Baldwin filling in for the Spouse on Dicebox.
Because, you see, having finished Chapter 3, she’s off channeling Edward Gorey as she fills in for Dylan Meconis on Bite Me!
And while you’re over at Girlamatic, you might want to pop in on the debut of Barry Deutsch’s Hereville.
And, heck, finish it off with the photos snapped by Winter and Sky McCloud of their dad goofing around with 24-hour cartoonists up and down the lower half of California.
Ignoring for the moment that neither Sky nor Winter
nor Scott nor Ivy is visible in the sample photo above.
