« October 2006 | Main | December 2006 »

November 30, 2006

By the Way . . .

"If you're doin' business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the Good Lord tellin' him how to fuck you on the deal." That excellent advice, offered long ago by William S. Burroughs, puts the latest message from Iran's chief Jew hater in the proper perspective. The same goes for the latest message from the Bullshitter-in-Chief. Typically, however, neither message from these jokers is worth getting in writing.

Posted by jherman at 9:20 AM

November 28, 2006

Last Playwright

Where to begin? An acquaintance mentioned him. But I don't know anything about Tuvia Tenenbom except what I've read. Never met him. Never saw any of his plays. I'm not much of a theatergoer these days.

After reading his "Letter From Poland" and watching his video posted on YouTube, however, I plan to see "Last Jew in Europe," his latest play, when it opens in New York.

How could I not? Tenenbom, who is the artistic director of the Jewish Theater of New York, apparently has a combination of brains and balls rarely found in the world, let alone in the world of the theater.

(Here's a review of his previous play -- billed as a "theatrical journey into the pleasures of chaos" -- "The Last Virgin." Love his titles.)

I'll admit when I read that "Last Jew" -- billed as a tragicomedy on racism and self-hate -- is "the story of love between a young Polish Jew and his Christian fiancée," I thought, Uh-oh. Wait a minute. Here come da schmaltz. But then I read on and was reassured:

Blood and vodka flow on stage, accompanied at times by disco music, as characters move deeper and deeper into their fears, hatred of the foreign, illusions and delusions. Crosses amass on the ground; some portray crucified young females nailed onto them, others young Hasidic males. As time passes, fire engulfs stage, burnt papers fly aimlessly, and images of anti-Semitic graffiti pop in & out of sight, dreamily mingling with the smoke.

Sounds promising. A real spectacular, no? "Last Jew in Europe" is scheduled to open on Feb. 7 at a theater in Manhattan, still to be announced.

Postscript: Word comes that the production is to open on March 4, 2007, at The Triad Theater (158 W. 72nd St., between Amsterdam and Columbus Aves.). Triad tel: 212.362.2590. JTNY tel: 212.494.0050

And just in case you missed the YouTube link:

Posted by jherman at 10:11 AM

November 27, 2006

Grab It While You Can

David Remnick must have taken my sterling advice. (Scroll to the last graf.) Or am I just imagining the content of this week's New Yorker is almost entirely online? Next week's might not be, so get it while it lasts.

Postscript: And isn't it nice to see Eric Alterman's latest alert in The Nation? He only lags by 12 days behind Pants On Fire, while managing to cop Frank Rich's "double down" language (applied to a different subject) with a lag time of a mere three days.

Posted by jherman at 1:09 PM

Factual vs. Actual

Do I detect the rank smell of condescension in the belated take on Keith Olbermann in this morning's LA Times? The reporter's reference to KO as a "longtime sportscaster" is factual but somehow belittling. And methinks her description of him as a "folk hero" for the left -- "an unexpected folk hero for the frustrated left," to be precise -- has a patronizing odor.

So does this: "When he's not lecturing Bush, he wears a perpetually amused expression on the air and casually tosses papers off his desk." Indeed he does. I can't gainsay her that. But there's something supercilious in how she puts the facts. Ditto when she describes him as "scribbling out" one of his commentaries (a particularly strong one at that) and when she points to "gushing" messages that come in (one, pointedly, from Joseph C. Wilson IV, who, it so happens, is exactly right about Olbermann and the press).

I could go on (and on). For instance, to the tut-tutting about KO's coverage of celebrities like Tom Cruise, and so forth, but that's getting too picky. Which is so juvenile.

Postscript: A reader from Los Angeles writes:

Whdd y 'spct whn y ct stff t th bn?

Context: To save space in the news hole, vowels have been eliminated as well as lots of top-drawer journalists and editors.

Translation: What did you expect when you cut staff to the bone?

Posted by jherman at 10:29 AM

November 25, 2006

It's Official

In case you've been wondering all this time:

Hold your nose and click the link to see the complete list. The Pentagon offers it without the least apology.

Postscript: "Good gracious me."

Posted by jherman at 11:16 AM

Banana Split

We've been carrying on for a long time about the BananaRepublic. In the last month alone we registered so many objections our insults glaze over. (See Banana Republicans, Rubber Stamps, Regime Change, Pants On Fire and No Full Stop).

So we couldn't help noticing with a certain amount of self-satisfaction that just yesterday Paul Krugman asked, "Do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we're in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?"

We concede he was not pointing at the use of torture and military tribunals that prohibit habeus corpus, as we were, but at "vote suppression and defective -- or rigged -- electronic voting machines" in Florida during the recent midterm election. But let's not split hairs.

Posted by jherman at 11:08 AM

November 23, 2006

Disappearing Act

Does anybody know the whereabouts of Darth Cheney? The big turkey arrived in Baghdad on a surprise visit for Thanksgiving, state-run Iraqiya TV reported. So did Al Arabiya TV. But a U.S. military spokesman said he's not in Iraq "as far as we know." (He also said, "I'm not confirming or denying he's here. I'm trying to figure that out.") The White House denied the Iraqi TV reports. (Anyway, who believes the White House these days?) Our guess is he's sleeping off an early tryptophanic binge somewhere, waiting to come out of hiding.

Postscript: He hath reappeared.

Posted by jherman at 10:30 AM

November 21, 2006

Quitting Time

Another must-see broadcast of indelible outrage: "Lessons from the Vietnam War," Keith Olbermann's latest special commentary on the Bullshitter-in-Chief. It aired last night. I don't know whether KO dines out on sushi, but if he's smart, he'll lay off for now.

Postscript: The bullshitter's takeaway from Vietnam -- "We'll succeed, unless we quit." -- also pisses off Joe Conason, and for the same reasons (expressed in almost the same words). He should watch his back, too.

Couldn't help noticing a peculiar contradiction in Conason's remarks, though. I'm sure he reviles what happened during the Vietnam War. Yet he damns the bullshitter for avoiding it. If he objects to the inequity of a privileged snot being able to cop out of the war by pulling strings while the less privileged couldn't, fine. He ought to say so. Instead he simply calls him "a man who quit Vietnam before he ever got there," as though the war was a worthy cause. Can't have it both ways, Joe.

Posted by jherman at 10:26 AM

November 19, 2006

PASS THE MILK, PLEASE

I try never to miss his Sunday sermons. But to "worship at the Church of Frank," as one of my staff of thousands puts it, is a sin I try never to commit too early in the morning. I generally wait until I've had my coffee.

Today, however, was an exception. Frank struck the sleep from my eyes by pointing to "the one truly serious story to come out of the election." Then I had my cup of coffee and read on.

According to Frank, the Bullshitter-in-Chief "has no intention of changing his policy on Iraq or anything else one iota." This, he says, "is far more significant than the Washington chatter about 'divided Democrats.'" Deeper into the sermon, on my second cup, I realized that Frank's theme sounded familiar. (See this and this.)

Churches customarily pass the plate after the service. Frank's does it beforehand. So you can't get his sermons unless you pony up, via subscription.* We're sorry for that, because Frank has a way with words even when he mixes metaphors and turns all red-white-and-blue.

He says the bullshitter "seems more likely ... to use American blood and money to double down on his quixotic notion of 'victory' to the end" than "to catch the political lifeline" Jim Baker's Iraq Study Group "might toss him." And, he concludes, "Only if [divided Republicans] heroically come together can the country be saved from a president who, for all his professed pipe dreams about democracy in the Middle East, refuses to surrender to democracy's verdict at home."

It will take a helluva more heroism than that, in our humble opinion. See Norman O. Mustill's collage, above, which hasn't dated "one iota." (It was first published in 1970 as the back cover of his Vietnam War commentary, "Mess Kit." It appeared there in black & white. Here it is for the first time in color, per the original.)

And see these: "Padilla Case Raises Questions About Anti-Terror Tactics"; "Gonzales attacks ruling against domestic spying"; "Plea deals pile up in Iraq murder cases"; "United States Rides Weapons Bonanza Wave," and "Lose a War; Lose an Election."

Postscript: Remember the hot-air speech called "Plan for Victory," a k a Plan for More Bullshit?

Well, a year later, here's what Henry Kissinger, the shameless wise man who's been advising the bullshitter to accept nothing less than victory, just told the BBC:

"If you mean by military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."

He even had the chutzpah to talk about "the art of leadership."

*Meantime, a staffer reminds me that Frank's sermon may be read here, no donation required.

Posted by jherman at 11:47 AM

November 16, 2006

NO FULL STOP

To hell with the voters. "U.S. plans last big push in Iraq." The BananaRepublic, like a wounded beast, lives on.

And don't forget to read this.

Posted by jherman at 9:25 AM

November 14, 2006

NEWS THAT STAYS NEWS

An especially strong broadcast from Democracy Now! features a segment on the war crimes lawsuit filed today in Germany against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet, General Ricardo Sanchez and other high U.S. officials -- see also this report in Time magazine -- and a segment with the star witness in the case, former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, at left, who headed Abu Ghraib.

Karpinski talks with Amy Goodman about the infamous torture photos, their meaning, and the memo on interrogation techniques that Rumsfeld signed, including "a handwritten annotation in the margin" consisting of four words: "Makes sure this happens!!" It was the "same handwriting and appeared to be the same ink as the signature on the memorandum," she says, indicating at the very least that Rumsfeld "had knowledge of what was being allowed in terms of interrogation." The techniques were, she notes, "authorized, ordered, designed and directed by people at much higher levels than mine or anybody else serving in Iraq."

The memo and notation are old news, pointed out earlier in many reports. Here's one (from tomdispatch.com, a project of the Nation Institute):

While testifying this January 21, [2006,] in New York City at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, Karpinski told us: "General [Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] himself signed [an] eight-page memorandum authorizing literally a laundry list of harsher techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission."

All this, as she reminded us, came after Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been "specifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operation," was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to "work with the military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved interrogation techniques."

Karpinski met Miller on his tour of American prison facilities in Iraq in the fall of 2003. Miller, as she related in her testimony, told her, "It is my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well. At Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners know that we are in charge and they know that from the very beginning. You have to treat the prisoners like dogs. And if they think or feel any differently you have effectively lost control of the interrogation."

Miller went on to tell Karpinksi in reference to Abu Ghraib, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation."

When she later asked for an explanation, Karpinski was told that the military police guarding the prisons were following the orders in a [one-page] memorandum approving "harsher interrogation techniques," and, according to Karpinski, "signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld."

... In the left-hand margin, alongside the list of interrogation techniques to be applied, Rumsfeld had personally written, "Make sure this happens!!" Karpinski emphasized the fact that Rumsfeld had used two exclamation points.

When asked how far up the chain of command responsibility for the torture orders for Abu Ghraib went, Karpinski said, "The Secretary of Defense would not have authorized [them] without the approval of the Vice President."

What has changed since then? When it comes to prosecuting the top officials, very little. And that's the news that stays news:

"The utter and complete failure of U.S. authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S.-based non-profit helping to bring the legal action in Germany, [Time reports]. He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the U.S. of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in American custody going back to Sept. 11, 2001.

Precisely, as noted here just the other day: "... despite claims to the contrary (such as "saving American lives"), the bullshitter's Republican enablers rammed through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [to] protect him and his henchmen from potential prosecution."

So as not to confuse an already complicated legal issue, made more so by the conflation of separate but related problems (Abu Ghraib vs. Guantanamo, Al Qaeda vs. Iraqi insurgents, interrogations abroad vs. in the U.S., captured enemy combatants vs. arrested U.S. citizens, and so on), here's an excellent backgrounder about the original memo of 2002 (the "Bybee memo") that set things off.

Posted by jherman at 10:55 AM

November 13, 2006

OFF THE WALL

Is this the most ridiculous thing you ever read? As if morale in the LA Times newsroom wasn't low enough. Seems to me publisher David Hiller must have wanted to squash it further.

First he forces out the editor when they can't agree on the paper's future, then he offers pap to the staff. Now his mash squash note to Rummy Boy.

Idiot quiz for the day: True or false?

1) Hiller is "a personable, funny and intellectually engaged executive."

2) Hiller is "the equivalent of a mafioso consigliere," also described as "a hard-nosed trial lawyer with no background in journalism."

Check your score.

Posted by jherman at 10:10 AM

November 10, 2006

ED BRADLEY, RIP

This blog is beginning to look like an obit column. Last week it was William Styron. Now it's Ed Bradley. His death made the front page at both The New York Times (here) and the Washington Post. Whether he was an icon or a trailblazer for black journalists is beside the point. He was the real thing, black or white, as this profile showed long ago:

It ran on Feb. 6, 1983, in the Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times. This is how it went:

Q. My daughter and I have been discussing whether Ed Bradley of the Sunday night CBS-TV series "60 Minutes" is black? Will you please settle this matter? -- B.H., Springfield, Ohio.
A. TV journalist Ed Bradley is black. -- Parade Magazine, Jan. 9, 1983

CLOSEUP / JAN HERMAN

NEW YORK -- "Is he black?" said Ed Bradley's boss. "I hadn't noticed."

Don Hewitt, executive producer of "60 Minutes," percolated rather than sat behind his desk. Milky daylight filtered through the large windows of his corner office across the street from the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan's West Side. He answered the phone. He asked someone to stop by later to see a videotape. He shouted, "Don't let him get away!" and his secretary nabbed the man with the coffee cart gliding by the door.

"You know," Hewitt continued, "when we finally decided who was going to replace [Dan] Rather, it happened on a day I was addressing a black employee association. They asked, 'Who is it?' I said, 'Ed Bradley.' And there was a lot of applause. I said, 'Hey, hold it. You don't understand something. We would have hired Ed Bradley if he were white.'"

Hewitt came around his desk, fishing coins from his pocket for a can of diet soda. "Coffee for you?" he asked. He pulled out more coins. His mood was ebullient. If it seemed odd that the boss of one of the most profitable news shows in CBS history should have to pay for drinks in his office, it nevertheless confirmed his reputation for the common touch.

"Bradley's as good a reporter as I've met in my life," Hewitt said. "His presence on screen is big and important. He is what he purports to be. He doesn't just look the part, he is the part. He is not a facade. A lot of television journalists are elitists. They didn't get hired, they got ordained. They think journalism is the priesthood, which is complete bull----. Bradley is the opposite of that."

Two years after joining "Don's Angels," as a jocular writer once dubbed Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Harry Reasoner, Bradley is flying with a full set of wings and a halo around his head. When I caught up with him over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, I wondered if he had ever heard Hewitt's anecdote about the black employee association meeting. Bradley put down his large glass of fresh orange juice, which he was savoring with his first cigarette of the day, and grinned so hard the gap showed in his chipped front teeth.

"I hadn't heard that one," he said. "Racially, I'm black. I'm not a 'black journalist.' The thing is, I have never allowed myself to be painted into that corner. And I've consciously made that decision. I didn't want to be an 'urban affairs' expert, the reporter who does the 'black stories.' I'm not saying that doing that kind of reporting is wrong. If that's what some people want to do, fine. You need people who specialize. If I had done that, I would never have gone to Paris. I would never have been a foreign correspondent. I would never have covered the Vietnam War. I would never have gone to Israel. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now."

What the 41-year-old Bradley is doing is what he loves best: cover the world. Now that the television networks have bureaus everywhere, "there are no more globe-trotters, like Lowell Thomas, Bob Consodine or Richard Harding Davis," as Hewitt is fond of saying. Bradley and the rest of the "60 Minutes" crew are the exceptions. Catching up with him is like trying to catch the wind. It is easier to stand still and let him rendezvous with you. He'll eventually blow by. His beat keeps him on the move for an average of 250,000 miles a year.

In person, Bradley does not disappoint. Hoisting his garment bag and trench coat for the bellman, he looked very much the world traveler who travels light. His only other piece of luggage was a small leather briefcase bulging with papers, a microphone for his interviews and a book for long, tedious flights.

"I love thrillers," he said. "I get one by Robert Ludlum and read it and I say, 'Damn, why didn't you write two?' It's nice escapist stuff. I think my ambition is one day to write a thriller."

In tweed jacket and jeans, with a maroon tie and matching handkerchief in his breast pocket, Bradley seemed at once nattier and more casual than he does on screen. But his salt-and-pepper beard and tortoise-shell glasses also reinforced the impression he can give of an interviewer so academic and laid back as to appear almost bored.

"Naw," Bradley said. "That's just my style. I don't knock them over the head unless they need to be. I tend to sit back. 'Here, how much rope do you want? You want a little more? Come on, it's yours.' I just sit back and listen. That's the key to doing a good interview, being a good listener. If someone is aware that you're interested in what they're saying, they tend to talk. All you have to do is steer them in the right direction."

He took another swallow of orange juice, fielding the stares of a group of women like a second baseman gloving an infield drive. Sudden recognition is routine for Bradley, and he handles it with aplomb. He respects it. He doesn't bask in it. The women, thrown out at first base, so to speak, returned to their dugout, apparently satisfied at not having struck out completely.

"You know, the funniest thing happened to me just before I got down here," Bradley said, lowering his voice. "I dialed my producer's number and this voice said, 'Hello?' I said, 'OK, you ready?' She said, 'Yeah, uh, what do you have in mind?' I said, 'Monica?' She said, 'No,' and she started laughing. So I said, 'Sorry, wrong woman.' She said, 'Well, it's probably the best one you'll have all day.' I dialed again. Would you believe it? I got the wrong woman again."

Bradley, hugely entertained, began eating his toast. He is a man who knows how to play his luck. For example, in 1978 Bradley flew to Malaysia to do a "CBS Reports" documentary about boat people escaping from Vietnam. It was his first documentary for the program, and when he got to the island of Kuala Trenganu, he found a contingent of TV journalists already there. They had been waiting for refugees to land for a week. None had. So the government set up a tour of its refugee camps, and the camera crews went.

Not Bradley. He decided to catch up on his sleep. As luck would have it, a boat materialized just as he began to doze. Bradley rushed to the beach and got an exclusive. More than that, when local villagers began stoning the boats to prevent them from landing, Bradley dived into the water and helped carry the refugees ashore. Later he played postman for their letters to America. The "CBS Reports" cameras caught it all.

Hewitt was so captivated by the footage of "The Boat People," he grabbed some for "60 Minutes." And he never forgot it. Later that footage helped him decide to hire Bradley. "The Boat People" also won a Columbia-duPont Award andd the Overseas Presss Club Edward R. Murrow Award.

"Awards are weird," Bradley said. "I went to the Emmys certain I would take something for correspondent and I walked away with nothing. I figured if I couldn't win an Emmy for 'The Boat People,' the award doesn't mean anything. [The broadcast as a whole took an Emmy.] Then I didn't go, and I got two [in 1980 for "Too Little Too Late," a series on Cambodian refugees, and for "Miami: The Trial That Sparked the Riots.]" You just can't figure it. So I don't go anymore." (He also won another Emmy for correspondent in 1981 for "Murder Teenage Style.")

Bradley lives in New York and is married to songwriter Priscilla Coolidge. The only child of divorced parents, he grew up in Philadelphia and began his broadcasting careeer in 1963. He was studying to become a teacher when he met thhe most popular disc jockey in town at the time.

"He came to speak at a colleege course called 'School and Community,'" Bradley said. "The idea was to show us what it would be like to teach in tough schools, y'know, where the kids didn't come from homes with white picket fences. All those kids listened to him and that meant he knew how to communicate with them.

"Anyway, he invited me out to the station and I thought, Oh, boy, this looks like fun. How can I get in? It didn't occur to me at that point that I should be paid for it. I wasn't even looking at it as a future career. It was just an opportunity to get my foot in the door. I did a jazz show six hours a day six days a week for no money."

But by 1967 Bradley had made up his mind to give up teaching and become a broadcast journalist. Having moved from music into spot news, public affairs and sports, he went to New York and auditioned for the local CBS radio station. He was hired as a street reporter, a job he held until 1970. He even turned down a couple of CBS television offers during that period, he says, because it would have required desk work part of the time and it would have paid less than his radio salary.

Then Bradley took a month's vacation in Europe and discovered Paris.

"I was supposed to be there for three days," he said. "I stayed for three weeks. I loved it so much I figured that was where I wanted to live. So I came back, quit my job and went to Paris for two years. It's still my favorite city. I didn't work there for the first nine months, and when I ran out of money, CBS asked me to be a stringer. I looked around at all the job possibilities I had -- all two of them -- and that was the most appealing."

Although being a radio stringer gave him freedom, Bradley decided by 1972 that he wanted a staff job again. This time he head for CBS-TV in New York, only to discover there were no openings. What's more, he also discovered he disliked New York. In a flippant moment he told the CBS News foreign editor he would rather live in Vietnam. The editor took him at his word. Bradley found himself assigned to the Saigon bureau, covering the Vietnam War.

Since then his career has been distinguished and his rise has been steady. Reassigned to the CBS Washington bureau in 1974, he volunteered to cover the fall of Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975. (He was evacuated from Saigon and Phnom Penh.) The following year he covered Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign and became CBS White House correspondent upon Carter's election. Feeling confined by that assignment, however, Bradley moved to "CBS Reports" in 1978 and continued to anchor the "Sunday Night News" until 1981, when he joined "60 Minutes."

"You know what?" said Bradley, finishing his breakfast. "I think I'm gonna ask for a raise."

Then he looked at his watch.

"Oh sh--," he said. "I'd better check out. Want a lift?"

"Thanks, no," I said, not wanting to get out at 39,000 feet over some ocean.

Posted by jherman at 3:47 PM

PANTS ON FIRE

Nobody believes him any more. (Nobody except Laura, of course. And the millions of Americans who prefer to be citizens of the not great — we hope, late — BananaRepublic.) Nancy Pelosi, like us, never did believe him. (It's too bad she's taken impeachment off the agenda.)

In any case, Howard Kurtz performed a small but worthy service this morning with his column following up on the Bullshitter-in-Chief's latest pile of droppings. The headline put it politely, "President's Evasion Raises Truth Issues."

Six days before the election, Bush told three wire-service reporters in an interview that Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were doing "fantastic" jobs.

"You see them staying with you until the end?" asked Terence Hunt of the Associated Press.

"I do," Bush replied.

"So you're expecting Rumsfeld, Secretary Rumsfeld, to stay on the rest of your time here?" asked Steve Holland of Reuters.

"Yes, I am," the president said.

Kurtz reports that White House spokesman Tony Snow wants us to believe the bullshitter wasn't lying (misleading, to be polite) and, furthermore, hadn't announced Rummy Boy's ouster before the elections because, in Snow's words, "He was not going to use that announcement to try to score political points."

Does Snow believe that himself? Yeah, right.

A few dopes on my staff of thousands think I've defamed Laura. They say she doesn't believe her husband either, but pretends to for appearance's sake. Which gives her too much credit.

Posted by jherman at 12:43 PM

November 8, 2006

REGIME CHANGE

Throw open the records. Let the sunshine in. Subpoena power to the people. Now that voters have finally said "Fuck You!" to the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his war in Iraq, let the investigations begin. It's way past time to put a full stop to the BananaRepublic.

Postscript: Good riddance to Rummy Boy. That's a start.

But Ralph Nader's assessment -- in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! -- puts a damper on expectations. He's correct, methinks:

[T]o the extent the Democrats gained the majority in the House, it was on the backs of some very rightwing Democrats who won the election against rightwing Republican incumbents. And so, there was no mandate for any progressive agenda. ...

[One] thing that is good, though, is that there's some very good veteran chairmen who are coming in: George Miller, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey and, of course, John Conyers. But to counter that, both John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi have taken the impeachment issue right off the table, before the election, and that means there's going to be no Bush accountability for his war crimes and his inflation of unlawful presidential authority.

... The Democrats will throw a lot of subpoenas at the White House. The White House will, of course, drag it on and on and on. And the public will get fed up with it. The White House has great reserves in dragging it on and on and on. Because Bush can't rely on Republicans as a majority of the Congress, he's going to inflate his presidential power even more extremely and unlawfully, in the opinion of many legal scholars -- to do through the inherent power of the presidency, as Dick Cheney and Bush have talked about, what he can't do through the Congress, which he no longer controls.

But notice that, in all the debates I've heard between the Senate candidates and the House candidates over the last few weeks, there was almost no mention of corporate power, the 800-pound gorilla, no mention of corporate crime, no drive for corporate reform. And yet, if you look at the forward issues in the country, who's saying no to healthcare, universal healthcare? Corporate power. Who's saying no to a real crackdown on corporate crime against consumers, especially inner-city consumers? Corporate power. Who's saying no to cleaning up the corrupt tens of billions of dollars in military contracting fraud, like Halliburton? Corporate power. Who's saying no to reform of hundreds of billions of dollars of diversion of your tax dollars, America, to corporate subsidies, handouts and giveaways? Corporate power. And yet, reporters and candidates hardly mentioned it. ...

This campaign, this election ... was basically a mandate-less election for the Democrats. There was really no mandate other than against Bush and do something about Iraq. Domestically, virtually no mandate about rearranging of power, shifting it from corporations to workers, consumers, taxpayers, to communities.

Aaarggghhhh.

Posted by jherman at 8:35 AM

SHUFFLIN' ALONG

Seen at 72nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan:

It "says something for the intelligence or humor of the people running the [NYC] transportation department," says Mike Reiter, whose friend Alice Dayton took the photo. Cousin Joan passed it along. My staff of thousands says thanks. But methinks Mr. Reiter gives the department too much credit.

Posted by jherman at 8:03 AM

November 6, 2006

FREEDOM PRIZE FOR FISK

British journalist Robert Fisk has won the Lannan Foundation's 2006 Lifetime Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom. It carries a cash award of $350,000. As Borat might say: "Verr nize!"

A full-page ad announcing the award in today's New York Times cites an excerpt from Fisk's massive 2005 book, "The Great War for Civilisation," which, ironically, the NYT Book Review excluded from its list of 100 Notable Books of the Year.

If you haven't had a chance to read Fisk, have a look at the column he wrote last June in The (London) Independent about Haditha. It ran under the headline "On the shocking truth about the American occupation of Iraq." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reprinted it with this headline: "The way Americans like their war." Believe me, you will be shocked. Even now, knowing what you think you know, you will be shamed:

Yes, the Nazis were much worse. And the Japanese. And the Croatian Ustashi. But this is us. This is our army. These young soldiers are our representatives in Iraq. And they have innocent blood on their hands.

Just FYI: We've posted lots of related items, including MR. JONES, MEET MR. FISK, LESS FLAG-WAGGING, PLEASE, CREDIT WHERE DUE, AND BONES TO PICK and FISK ON THE JOURNALISTAS and WHAT MEANS GENOCIDE? There are others. If you're interested, they're easily found by inserting his name under "Search this site" in the right column.

Posted by jherman at 1:30 PM

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The day after the midterm elections they're holding a downtown book party at NYU for "The Good Fight Continues," a collection of World War II letters from the soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. You remember them, of course.

You don't? Well! "They were a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)," the publisher offers as a reminder. "They fought on the losing side. After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism. ..."

No comparison with Iraq intended, but that doesn't sound like much to celebrate -- although if America's Banana Republicans get what they deserve tomorrow, watch out! The party will rock. Time: Nov. 8, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Place: 70 Washington Square South, NYU's Bobst Library, 10th floor. (OK, I confess: This notice is a favor to a friend.) Freeloaders are welcome.

Posted by jherman at 10:02 AM

November 5, 2006

RUBBER STAMPS

We'll see whether the Banana Republicans will be turned out of office -- dumped, I hope, like the old rubber stamps they are -- or whether they will retain their power as enablers of the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his minions.

David Brooks, in his latest inanity, writes: "You do not want your opponent running ads calling you a rubber stamp, because in this climate that hurts." Which is to say, in some it doesn't? (Was he was thinking of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan?)

Not to single him out -- although he also deserves it for his previous inanity (bemoaning the expected defeat of Rick Santorum) -- Peggy Noonan ought to be cited as well. She, too, sees the defeat of that Banana Republican as "a national loss."

In her Wall Street Journal column on Saturday, headlined "We Need His Kind," she writes that she asked a former senator ("a crusty old moderate Republican") if he liked Santorum. "No," he said, "I love him." Why? Because, when the old crust tried to mentor him,

Mr. Santorum was grateful and appreciative, "but he kept speaking his mind!" The former senator: "The political scientists all say to be honest and stand for principle, that's what people want. And he was exactly that, and he's about to get his head handed to him." ... It was sad, he said.

So Noonan wants us to believe Santorum will get his head handed to him not for being a rubber stamp -- a 98% voting record with the bullshitter, according to his opponent -- but for being honest? Now that's a laugh.

Posted by jherman at 10:41 AM

November 3, 2006

ART AND MISDIRECTION

I'm a sucker for a pretty picture. Like this one, made by the guy who used to be Newsweek's art critic:

As you can see, he's gonna be there to talk about stuff. I know the guy. So if any of you do show up at the gallery, tell him you saw this notice. It will impress him, I hope, and make him grateful.

Now here's another picture:

This one is not so pretty, but I like it, too:

It was pointed out by the smart guy on my staff of thousands who's been reading French media philosophe Jean Baudrillard and applying his simulacrum-of-reality theory to just about everything -- democracy, Iraq, free speech, Frank Rich, David Brooks -- but especially to the rules of political misdirection. The prose is a little turgid for my taste, but the rules are clear.

Posted by jherman at 10:31 AM

November 2, 2006

WILLIAM STYRON, RIP

Death was never very far from his mind. "Once, when serving with the Marines, Styron was stationed on a desolate island in New York City's East River where unclaimed bodies of the dead were buried." So went my intro to an interview he gave me many years ago. (He died yesterday at 81.)

"This equivalent of potter's field had such a profound effect on him that a long description of it in 'Lie Down in Darkness,' his first novel, is arguably the most evocative passage in the book." And, I continued,

It revealed how readily Styron escaped purely Southern locales even in what he agrees was his most Southern novel, and how masterly he was in transforming a brief experience into a lasting theme. When the body of the young heroine Peyton Loftis, who has killed herself, is brought from the morgue and interred in an unmarked grave, it is not simply a crowning indignity for the tormented Loftis family, but Styron's tragic statement of how close we all are to oblivion.

Peyton's husband restores order, albeit in a small way, to the irrational universe of that novel when he exhumes the body and ships it home to her distraught father for a proper burial. And, in a larger way, Styron reclaims history's victims for literature by performing a memorial service, as it were, through the ceremony of his art.

Styron insisted he didn't choose his subjects. It was the other way around. "The subject often chooses you," he said.

I find that I'm interested in all my work in human domination and why people try to dominate one another. I mean it politically and on a personal level. It's just an area of consciousness that has intrigued me. I don't think it's a bizarre thing. Maybe it's just where the tensions reside that motivate me to write.

The interview took place in Chicago. He had come to celebrate publication of the collected works of Herman Melville by the Library of America. Styron, then 57, was at the height of his fame. Later that night, while watching the Academy Awards on television, he was to see Meryl Streep thank him for writing "Sophie's Choice" as she accepted an Oscar for her performance in the film adaptation of that novel.

Styron was wearing a gray robe over a starched white shirt and trousers, and had just finished lunch in a suite at the Whitehall Hotel. He and Saul Bellow were going to speak at the Newberry Library, where the definitive Melville texts were prepared.

It was a good excuse to ask him to single out the writers who influenced him. (No profile of Styron ever left out the fact that he kept a famous saying by Gustave Flaubert on the wall of his study: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.") But he was reluctant to say.

Pressed, he gave in a bit.

Flaubert would be one, but I can't answer the question. I'm sorry. The field is too great. I'd have to write several essays just to locate myself. I still read a considerable amount, but at one time in my life, from about 18 to 28, I read everything, and I'm only barely exaggerating. I read all the writers who were worth reading. Plainly, I must have had some very important influences.

He finally began to list writers by nationality. It was a mainstream selection. Among the Russians: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekov. Among the French: Chateaubriand, Stendahl, Balzac. He halted at Zola and put his hand to his temple. "I don't mean to sound like this," he said, "but I'd have to give you a list of a hundred writers, which would be silly to do."

As the obituaries have pointed out -- here, here and here -- Styron was in declining health for a long time before he died. Earlier, in his 60s, depression had nearly driven him to suicide.

A few months ago I chanced to meet his wife Rose Styron. Knowing he was ill, I mentioned to her that I had just enjoyed reading what is possibly his least-known book, "The Long March," a slim novella about a pair of Marines in conflict with their commanding officer. Her face lit up. "He'll like that," she said. "I'll tell him." I hope she did.

Posted by jherman at 8:00 AM