(Display Name not set)November 2003 Archives

Our Maximum Leader's secret mission to Iraq, described as bold even by some of his critics, had all the trappings of a novelty act. Anyone who believes for a minute that the White House arranged it for the troops is living on another planet.

The lights-out landing, Our Maximum Leader in the cockpit of Air Force One watching the pilots bring him in, his impersonation of a cocktail-party waiter serving turkey on a platter, the widely reported tear on hischeek (stilted grin notwithstanding) had satirical "Daily Show" skit written all over it. (See "Mess O'Potamia.") More than an act of bold presidential leadership, it was political farce meant to erase the bad karma of the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

And how about those historical sidebars? The perspective on Our Maximum Leader's heroics in The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News recalling Lincoln's visits to Antietem and Richmond during the Civil War, Roosevelt's shipboard meeting with Churchill during World War II and Johnson's wartime trip to Vietnam were so informative it sounded (even if it wasn't) like a story idea fed to the press by the White House PR staff. So what if the Thanksgiving surprise was less scary or momentous? The story gets Our Maximum Leader's name in lights on the same marquee: Lincoln, Roosevelt, Johnson and now Bush. That's showbiz.

Consequently, with more troops dying than ever, Iraq is becoming an obligatory stop on the circuit, much like the TV talk shows. Hilary Clinton stuck her two cents in with a visit that lasted 10 hours, which put her in a bolder category than Our Maximum Leader, whose boldness lasted two and a half hours.

POSTSCRIPT from the Good Call department: "Can a stealth holiday trip make us forget the premature 'Mission Accomplished'?" That's the pullquote of the lead article in the Week in Review section of Sunday's New York Times. But you'll have to take my word for it. The pullquote is writ large above the fold in the print edition. It has disappeared, however, from the online version.

Excellent word comes from ABC News, if it holds. A report about Frederick, the Imbabazi Orphanage artist and photographer, is scheduled for Thanksgiving on "PrimeTime Thursday" (10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT). His hands were amputated during the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and have since been replaced by prosthetics with help from supporters of the Rwanda Project: Through the Eyes of Children.

Frederick's story was originally supposed to run Aug. 14 on ABC's "World News Tonight" but didn't: That turned out to be the night of the big Northeast blackout. This time the piece will have an added mention about project founder David Jiranek, who died accidentally on Aug. 17.

I've written about the Rwanda Project many times before as "an arts project of the most stirring kind." (Definitely click on the flash introduction.)Frederick is one of 13 children who were part of it. See for yourself who Frederick is. Go to the group photo "Meet the Children" and run your mouse over his face in the upper lefthand corner (he's the one in the yellow shirt).

Meantime, as I've written before, you can listen to an NPR interview of orphanage founder Rosalind Carr, who is 90 and still going strong. "She's everybody's feisty grandmother who can entertain you for hours, sitting at her knee, listening to her fabulous stories," David Jiranek said not long before he died. "She has perfectly coiffed gray hair, is a magician with gardens and plants, has tea every day at 4, and then slugs [it out] with the government, landlords, etc. fighting for her kids."

As I've also written before, how about buying a print of one of "The Rwanda Project" artists? Hell, buy more than one. It's a tax-deductible donation. Here's how to help. If you can't afford the price of a print ($100), just enjoy the photos on the site and forward the URL to friends.

POSTSCRIPT: Late word comes that there will be no mention of David Jiranek, founder of the Rwanda Project, in the "Primetime" piece. No matter, even if it's possible that of all the stories connected with the Imbabazi Orphanage, Jiranek's might actually be the most fascinating. He was too modest ever to have believed that and, had he lived, he never would have allowed anybody else to believe it. But those who knew him will appreciate what I mean.

Jeannette Walls, the gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, complained yesterday in her newsletter that there were "nine camera crews from Japan alone" covering Michael Jackson's arrest in handcuffs. I wonder if her own editors ever read her newsletter.

MSNBC.com's entertainment section gave the Japanese a run for their money with eight stories in a row: "Jackson tells fans he's innocent"; "Liz Taylor says Jackson is innocent"; "Scoop: Team Jackson goes on offensive with P.I." (Walls' column); "Dateline NBC: The case against Jackson"; "Newsweek: From moonwalk to perp walk"; "Jackson's friends react with silence"; "'Thriller' nixed from parade lineup"; "Will arrest affect Jackson's sales?"

This from the No. 2 news site on the Web -- CNN is first -- with pretensions to high-quality, original journalism? Please. Like the MSNBC cable channel, its sister operation, which panders for ratings, the Web site has an editorial mission that is neither high-quality nor original. In fact, it largely consists of gathering wire reports available on almost any other news site and dressing them up, often with dopey "votes" to create the illusion of reader participation.

Ever since the departure of its founding editor, Merrill Brown, MSNBC.com has been on a downhill slide as a journalistic enterprise. Brown, too, prized celebrity stories, but he knew their limits. MSNBC.com's Microsoft masters forced him out, journalism be damned, and his replacement, compliant editor in chief Dean Wright, seems happy to execute their wishes. It's a shame.

(Full disclosure: I used to be MSNBC.com's entertainment & arts editor under Brown and left five months ago after Wright took over.)

I've overlooked the Stella Awards for too long. There have been so many bogus stories about them on the Web that I simply dismissed them. The Stella Awards, if you don't know, are named after 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's in 1992.

She won $200,000 in compensatory damages (later reduced by 20 percent to $160,000) "because the jury found her 20 percent at fault," and $2.7 million in punitive damages (reduced by the judge to $480,000). That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States.

Last week several people e-mailed me news of the latest winners. The e-mail pointed out that, "unfortunately, the most recent lawsuit implicating McDonald's, the teens who alleged that eating at McDonald's had made them fat, was filed after the 2002 award voting was closed." The message, which failed to mention that the obesity suit was dismissed, continued with the list of this year's winners:

5th Place (tie):

A jury of her peers awarded Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, $780,000 after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

5th Place (tie):

Nineteen-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

5th Place (tie):

Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the
tune of $500,000.

4th Place:

Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next-door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place:

A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend earlier during an argument.

2nd Place:

Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a nightclub in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place:

This year's run away winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R. V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying recreational vehicles.

The e-mail went on to ask: "Is this proof that we are in the decline of a civilization or that we are all destined to be replaced by rats?"

The answer is we may well be replaced by rats one day, but the winning cases just cited are not the proof. Except for Stella's case, all of them are fabrications -- urban legends, some embroidered from minimal facts, others made of whole cloth. They sure are funny, though. Here are the actual winners for 2002.

Magic for a Monday morning: While you're finishing your coffee, move your mouse over the screen here and here and here. Now it's time to go to work. What a shame.

EAR OPENER

This morning also brings news of Ray Kurzweil's latest invention: the cybernetic poet, a software program he regards as an aid to poets in need of inspiration. The program works like a blender, apparently. It whips up rhymes and rhythms and mixes in words taken from any poems you choose to feed it.

The results? Here's a sample of cybernetic poems and haiku, and here's another sample.

To my taste but in no particular order, these are the best. This one is based on poems by Wendy Dennis and Ray Kurzweil and love poems by various authors:

Imagine now and sing,
creating myths
forming jewels from the falling snow.

Here's a cybernetic haiku, after poems by John Keats and Wendy Dennis:

You broke my soul
the juice of eternity,
the spirit of my lips.

Another cybernetic haiku, after poems by Wendy Dennis and John Keats:

Double dreams
hover'd about,
a lamp from my soul.

(By the way, does anybody know who Wendy Dennis is?) Here's a cybernetic poem, based on poems by Wendy Dennis and Emily Dickinson:

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the daffodil
I've heard the flag to-day
I've heard the hunter tell;
'Tis but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the despair and
frenzied hope of all the ages.

A cybernetic haiku, based on poems by Walt Whitman:

Ages and pink in Sex,
Offspring of the
voices of all my Body.

A cybernetic poem, based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

In spite of old delight
And winter comes the streams
And I know that I can see the foam,
Here is full of dreams.

I suppose it takes investigation of the original poems to tell whether this is inspired imitation, as Kurzweil says, or merely plagiarism. I don't think it matters much. Not that plagiarism is OK. As one of my favorite writers has said "nobody owns words." It's words-in-combination that make the difference, distinguishing one writer's work from another's. Let's think of Kruzweil's cybernetic poet as a sort of recombinant DNA, shall we?

POSTSCRIPT: You can download a simple version of the program here, for free. Give it a shot, and send me your results.

"Curse of Youth," an interesting take on those newspaper tabs for tots, provides a shorthand clue to success: "If you want your newspaper to appeal to young people, you must be willing to print the word 'fuck.'" Vulgar but true, and here's the reason:

Young people want the world as they see it: without filters. It's why they love "The Daily Show." Because it's smart, informed, crude and passionate. Like young people. Young people will argue vehemently with you for hours about party politics, about religion, about love and war and peace and that weird new $20 bill. They will curse when they argue, using words like "fuck." Then, once they are done, they will go out to a bar and get fucking blasted-ass drunk and go home with another young person and fuck like bunnies until they pass out. That's their world, and if you wanna live in it, you'd better print it.

The trouble is, by that reasoning The New Yorker should be more popular with young readers than Us Weekly or People -- and it ain't. Is it possible that young people are not as passionate and smart as claimed? That they're just vulgar? Terrible but true.

One thing about the upcoming Biennale de Paris seems certain. It's not going to score points with English speakers. Here's what the latest biennale bulletin has to say, in so-called English translation, about the theme and context of the 2004 exhibition:

The BDP is an event favorising an art dynamic with the goal to reveal the actuality of the art in his new advanced forms. Threw new advanced art forms and by the valorisation of the immaterial production, this event reach to reconsider Paris as a major place on the international art scene. The imaterial productions and the new advance art forms means works of mind which is in keeping in the reality and which generate elements of reflexion, of awareness, or revealing in order of the personal experience, colectively and socialy. free from the influence of the aesthetic domination, the imaterial productions and the new advanced art foms definite itself in terms of free mind which assert itself.

Got that? Talking about the avant-garde (new advance art forms) is no excuse for drivel. If this is what the French think English is, no wonder they're afraid it will pollute their language. English like this would pollute any language.

Late on a Friday afternoon is not the best time to bring this up. Everybody's probably gone or about to be gone for the weekend. But if you're still around and online you've got to read "The Vanishing Case for War" by Thomas Powers in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.

He begins, "The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case of the misreading of secret intelligence information in American history." Then, with compelling details and riveting clarity, he addresses "whether it is even possible that a misreading so profound could yet be in some sense 'a mistake.'"

The conclusions Powers draws -- about a U.S. Congress that is nothing but an empty shell and a CIA that is nothing more than a pawn of the White House, let alone an arrogant, imperial presidency that undermines our security with lies -- are familiar enough. But Powers martials the evidence without polemics, and his argument is so convincing it ought to give us nightmares.

The British sure know how to welcome a guest, especially when it's Gee Dubya Shrub on a state visit. Let's not count the fountain water stained red in Trafalgar Square; it's the scribblers -- wise-asses, poets, professors, novelists and the cream of the theater -- whose tone set the example.

Dear Jorge,
Look out! Behind you!!
Hahahahahahahaha, only kidding.
Love,
DBC Pierre

That note, actually by novelist Peter Finlay using his nom de plume, was one of the 21 letters published earlier this week in London's Guardian. Others who offered their welcome naturally included members of Parliament, none of whose words were as pungent as these:

Dear President Bush,
I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments.
Harold Pinter
playwright

It's a week of extraordinary commemorations. Today's big news is the unveiling later this morning of finalists in the 9/11 Memorial Design competition. Families of 9/11 victims saw the designs last night in a preview at the Winter Garden across the street from Ground Zero, where a public exhibition of the designs begins today. Check the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and ImagineNY Web sites for the latest news.

Whaddya know. Eight finalists were just announced:

• "Votives in Suspension" by Norman Lee and Michael Lewis
• "Lower Waters" by Bradley Campbell and Matthias Neumann
• "Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud" by Gisela Baurmann, Sawad Brooks and Jonas Coersmeier
• "Suspending Memory" by Joseph Karadin with Hsin-Yi Wu
• "Garden of Lights" by Pierre David with Sean Corriel and Jessica Kmetovic
• "Reflecting Absence: A Memorial at the World Trade Center Site" by Michael Arad
• "Dual Memory" by Brian Strawn and Karla Sierralta
• "Inversion of Light" by Toshio Sasaki

Here's a look at the eight designs. When you click on each image, you can read about the theme of that particular design.  

Saturday's news will be the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The commemorations have already begun. Paul Krassner's latest Zen Bastard column, "Conspiracy Queen," is a tribute to a woman who spent eight years cross-referencing (without a computer) the 26 volumes of the Warren Report and ending up with more than 27,000 typewritten pages, as well as the conviction that, contrary to the report, "Lee Harvey Oswald was set up to take the fall" for the assassination.

By contrast, this week's TV specials commemorating the events in Dallas' Dealey Plaza confirm the Warren Commission Report, to the extent that they bother with it at all. Which is not surprising when you consider the excellent point that TV writer Alessandra Stanley makes: "The swirl of interviews, documentaries and specials building up to Nov. 22 are not really about the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination." They're really a self-regarding celebration of television: "the day a young, vigorous medium was swept into power and forever changed American culture and politics." Here's a roundup of the TV specials.

POSTSCRIPT: Hmm. How could I have missed this? "LBJ aides say JFK documentary a smear." A History Channel film alleges that Lyndon Johnson had a role in in the JFK assassination. Some kooks will believe anything.

Several newspapers around the country have started bite-sized tabs for readers who are either still learning to read or have no time to digest the news in larger bites. The Dallas Morning News recently bought into the tabs-for-dummies trend with Quick, which targets what it calls "time-starved" young readers.

In fact, it's not the first Quick to hit the streets, according to the poet and journalist Leon Freilich. During the early 1950s there was a previous incarnation called Quick magazine, which "promised to tie up the nation's week's news succinctly on pages little bigger than a cigarette pack."

The following story made the media rounds: Quick commissioned long-winded novelist James Michener to visit Egypt and write an in-depth article about its politics, economy and prospects in the changing post-WWII world. Michener was in Luxor when, two months into his assignment, he received a telegram from the magazine: "Need Egypt piece fast. Keep to eight words." How long did Quick last? About as long as a carton of cigarettes in the stained fingers of a nicotine junkie.

Freilich told that tale to Jim Romenesko. It was too much fun not to repeat. Now here's the game, which has nothing to do with tabs for dummies: How good are you at reading faces? Can you tell the difference between a serial killer and a program inventor? Test your intuition. 

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," which opened Friday, was way overrated by the critics. (Admittedly, some were underwhelmed, like Stephen Hunter.) Not being a devotee of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels, the basis for the movie, I'm in no position to judge whether they've been faithfully translated to the screen -- and couldn't care less -- though I can't imagine stunning "visuals" and a drum-beating score (the movie's strong suits) are the novels' main strengths.

In any case, what do you make of this MSNBC.com headline: "Crowe's new film dwarfed by 'Elf'"? When you read the story beneath it, you discover that "Elf" earned $27.2 million, while "Master and Commander" earned $25.7 million. Dwarfed, huh? I guess the headline writer couldn't resist playing with words in an attempt at cuteness. We used to talk about truth in advertising. How about accuracy in headlines?

The independent 9/11 commission, which had me worried me, just lost so much of its independence you have to wonder whether American democracy has become a charade. The commission's job -- to find out what the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks and whether they could have been prevented -- has turned into the equivalent of asking the Saudis to show us their bank records.

Track the progression from last week's headlines: "9/11 Panel May Reject Offer of Limited Access to Briefings" (Nov. 7), "Panel Reaches Deal on Access to 9/11 Papers" (Nov. 11), "Deal on 9/11 Briefings Lets White House Edit Papers" (Nov. 13).

Although the headlines tell the story in broad outline, they don't give the devilish details. The "deal" means that Bush and his cronies will not only have the right to edit sensitive Oval Office documents (chiefly Bush's daily intelligence reports) before letting the commission see them, but will also have the right to choose what reports to show the commission.

That's terrific. After all, according to The New York Times, "administration officials acknowledge that they fear that information in the reports might be construed to suggest that the White House had clues before Sept. 11, 2001, that Al Qaeda was planning a catastrophic attack." Why shouldn't the maximum leader of a developing banana republic be entitled to sanitize the records?

Here's why. (Isn't it about time Ron Rosenbaum apologized to Gore Vidal?)

Meantime, Bruce Fierstein gets my vote for funniest take on Der Gropenfuhrer's plan to investigate himself. Fierstein thinks it's a trend to watch -- Martha Stewart, Karl Rove and Kobe Bryant might latch onto it. We've already seen how it's caught on at the White House.

The consensus of a recent panel on Cuba (that Bush would likely veto legislation ending the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba) has been rendered moot. The legislation had been attached to the transportation bill the maximum leader needs to approve, so as to make a veto more difficult for him.

But as reported Thursday, "President Bush's allies in Congress quietly eliminated [the] widely supported provision easing restrictions on American travel to Cuba from a major appropriations bill to save him from embarrassment over his political designs in Florida, officials from both parties said." In other words, Bush can continue to pander to the Cuban émigrés in Miami without having to take a hit from other constituencies.

David Lynch is the world's "most important filmmaker of the current era." So say experts for London's Guardian newspaper, who rated the world's 40 best directors on the basis of five categories: substance, look, craft, originality and intelligence. Martin Scorsese followed so closely at No. 2 in the ranking -- he scored 88 points to Lynch's 89, out of a possible 100 -- he should lodge a protest with the track stewards.

Steven Spielberg didn't make the list at all. Neither did Clint Eastwood, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Roman Polanski, Peter Weir, Francis Ford Coppola, nor the other usual suspects. Rounding out the top five were Joel and Ethan Coen (3rd), Steven Soderbergh (4th) and, if you can believe it, Terrence Malick (5th). Errol Morris made the top ten (7th). So did David Cronenberg (9th).

Other favored darlings who made the cut were Pedro Almodovar (15th), Todd Haynes (16th) and Quentin Tarantino (17th), along with Paul Thomas Anderson (21st), Alexander Payne (24th), Spike Jonze (25), Ang Lee (27th), Michael Moore (28th), Wes Anderson (29th), Richard Linklater (31st), David O Russell (34th), Larry and Andy Wachowski (35th), David Fincher (39th) and Gus Van Sant (40th). Needless to say, "the current era" has a few kinks.

I've just seen a video that chills the spine: "Ask for Death." Assuming the edited film clips are sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, as claimed, and that the translations from the Arabic are accurate, it shows what jihadist brain-washing looks like in children: calm belief that masks a terrifying, homicidal rationale for religious suicide attacks.

(If the above link does not work, right-click it and then click "open in new window.")

The video, directed by Itamar Marcus, begins with a voiceover: "'Ask for death' is the message the Palestinian Authority has been conveying to its children since the start of violence in October 2000." It continues with two earnest 11-year-old girls interviewed on official Palestinian television.

"Shahada [dying for Allah in battle] is a very, very beautiful thing," says Walla. "Everyone yearns for Shahada."

"Of course Shahada is a good thing," says Yussra. "We don't want this world, we want the Afterlife. We benefit not from this life, but from the Afterlife. Oh Lord, I would like to become a Shahid."

The video clip of 6 minutes and 40 seconds is labeled as the product of Palestinian Media Watch. It is explained and outlined here with documentation (including fuller quotations from both girls).

What is peculiar, which made me suspicious of the video's origin -- though not of its basic validity -- is that the Palestine Media Watch I've been aware of is a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel advocacy group associated with Noam Chomsky, while the video is obviously pro-Israel and anti-Palestine.

Notice the difference in the names of the groups. My feeling was that Palestinian Media Watch had co-opted the name of its opposing site in the propaganda war. But, in fact, it's the other way around. The pro-Israeli PMW associated with Marcus was established in 1996. The pro-Palestine PMW associated with Chomsky was begun in 2000.

Regardless of who's co-opting whom, "Ask for Death" has to be seen to appreciate the depth of the horror that has infected the Middle East and now threatens the rest of the world.

Time for a change of subject. How about whale-spotting?

Leon Freilich, bidding fair to be his generation's Ogden Nash, noticed a news story, "A Whale Stops By, but Doesn't Stay Long," that related a bodacious game of hide-and-seek earlier this week off the coast of Far Rockaway.

"Reporters raced to the scene," where a whale was supposed to have come ashore, the story said. "But by the time they arrived, there was no whale to be seen." Such is life for the breathless New York press corps.

A member of the press himself, Freilich reached into his bag of tricks and turned the account to verse, like so:

WHALE AND FAREWELL

It isn’t often jets of spray
Are spotted in New York’s own bay,
The mammal’s gushers blue and gray
Like a moody painting by Monet
(Or do I mean copain Manet?).
Sea creature, believe me when I say
All the town was hoping you’d stay.
But instead of a daytrip to Rockaway
O whale, you swanned off thataway.
What possible factors did you weigh
That led to this dispiriting display?
Does Gotham’s glass and steel array
Of buildings bring on some dismay
And make you long for the blessèd day
When once again you’re in Monterrey?
You gave us locals no chance to display
Our genuine love of Cetacea at play.
So, whale, next time you’re out this way,
Let’s hoist drinks at an aquatic café.

Freilich adds separately, in mundane prose: "The whale turned out to be cruising not Far Rockaway but Fire Island; and it wasn't a whale but Prince Charles."

It turns out I'm not the only person to have noticed Polanski's unforgivable omission in "The Pianist." Many readers messaged that they also noticed it.

First, here's the reply from my friend Alan M. Edelson, whose admiration for "The Pianist" got me started:

I found your take on the film very interesting. Still, it does not change my mind about finding the film powerful. Yes, there was some Hollywood string pulling, which one has come to expect. I agree totally that the omission of the family's fate in the scroll is a huge gaff. Was it deliberate, or was it stupidity? Having published a lot of stuff in books and journals, and seen a lot of gaffs, I am inclined to believe in the stupidity explanation. And I think the German officer was more than a good touch---I think it was useful, to show an appreciation of the fact/possibility that some Germans didn't feel entirely immune to empathy, which I believe was the case. I don't feel that these factors should undermine your overall critical assessment.

I have to say I don't think the omission was deliberate either. But Polanski's carelessness, in this case, is still unforgivable. Another reader wrote:

I think you're right. My mom had the same reaction -- like the Germans get these mega-points for simply acting like any decent person should. On the other hand, I think Polanski is a subtle enough filmmaker that you can look at the picture in different ways. One of the elements of the story, I thought, was that [the pianist] Szpilman was a self-absorbed guy who really didn't care much about anything other than his art or himself.

One reader had this to say:

I read that article by Thane Rosenbaum and, actually, he ultimately rejects the German desire to say "enough" to Holocaust recriminations. As to your review, I couldn't agree more about "The Pianist." -- Matthew Butcher

If I implied otherwise about Rosenbaum's article, I didn't intend to. Meantime, a reader pointed out my error (since corrected) of referring to Rosenbaum as a woman. I should have realized that. After all, the Thane of Cawdor (i.e. Macbeth) was a man. This reader had fun with my reply:

Thane's Jewish roots are in Poland, so he can be considered the Thane of Cracow. Or, as his Yiddishe mamme used to say, Bei meir bist du Thane. If it's all the Thane to you, I'll go back to translating George Whatever Bush's press-conference remarks into English. The assignment's from Vice Prevaricator Cheney himself.
-- Leon Freilich

The most passionate message came from a regular reader who prefers to remain anonymous:

Mr. Herman -- Your observation and criticism of Polanski is absolutely on point. It is a disgusting omission. I think the more important question is, "Why?" My personal opinion is that people refuse to come face to face with the capacity for evil which exists in each of us. This leads to some interesting mythology surrounding the Holocaust which, on occasion, is expressed in films such as "The Pianist."

The most pervasive myth surrounding the Holocaust is that it was the work of a very small number of Nazi fanatics. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Never forget that, at a time when Germany was considered one of the most civilized, best educated countries in the world, Hitler and the Nazi party were elected by the voters (although by less than a majority in a runoff). Hitler and the Nazis spoke openly of the need to exterminate the Jews (and the Russians for that matter) as far back as the publication of "Mein Kampf," in 1929, if memory serves.

The actual state-sponsored killing of Jews was carried out by a bureaucracy which employed tens of thousands of people. The record keeping was meticulous. The average German citizen not only knew full well the crimes being committed by his or her government, they supported those actions.

It's interesting to note that the U.S. soldiers who fought in Europe during World War II did not like our British allies. Found them cold and distant. The GI's didn't typically like our French allies. Found them arrogant. The GI's identified most closely with the hard working, obedient Germans. How can we, as a country, resolve our disgust for the Holocaust with our affection for the people who committed the acts? By convincing ourselves that the typical German citizen was not only blissfully, innocently ignorant of the crimes, but that, when he or she was able to pierce the veil of secrecy which surrounded the Holocaust, they took heroic steps to intercede. This view is historically inaccurate and morally wrong.

By refusing to recognize the complicity of the average German citizen (whom we really like) in the crimes of his or her government, we miss an opportunity and avoid an obligation to examine the events which resulted in the institutional murder of more than 6,000,000 Jews and almost 25,000,000 Russians. This is tragic in that it denies humanity the ability to identify the factors which allowed the crimes to be committed and thus, denies humanity an important tool in the prevention of future crimes. (I know the word "crimes" fails to convey the monstrous nature of the acts, but is the only word I can think at the moment.)

So, what does this have to do with Polanski and "The Pianist?" Well, by simply ignoring the fate of the pianist's family, Polanski can ignore the pervasive presence within Germany of mass murder in the industrial age. He never has to explain or even face the complicity of most of the German population.

This complicity flies in the face of the more important and more subtle message of the film. The message being that many Germans, such as the officer martyred in the end, objected to the actions of the German government, resisted to the extent of their ability, and died heroically as a result. Somehow, I suspect that the true, documented number of such individuals is depressingly small.

As if to bring us all up to speed, 74-year-old billionaire George Soros, "one of the world's richest men," tells the Washington Post that he believes "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world" and that "a 'supremacist ideology' guides the White House."

Soros "hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary," the Post reports. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans.' It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ('The enemy is listening'). 'My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me,' he said." Defeating Bush in the 2004 presidential election has thus become "the central focus" of his life. It's "a matter of life and death," he told the Post in an interview.

The author Thane Rosenbaum wrote an article a few days ago outlining "the dilemma facing the builders of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin," as it was described this morning by one of its readers. Read his complete article, "The Price of Forgiveness," and then this morning's reactions, "The Long Shadow of the Holocaust."

"When it comes to the Holocaust, the Germans just can't catch a break," Rosenbaum began. But I can think of at least one break the Germans caught. Roman Polanski gave it to them in "The Pianist."

I mention this because it's time somebody said it. My feelings about that acclaimed movie came back to me last night when a friend messaged how much he loved it. Prompted by Fred Kaplan's Sunday piece, "When Bad DVD's Happen to Great Films," he wanted to check the quality of his "Pianist" DVD. He intended to watch only a few minutes, but ended up watching the whole movie over again "because it was so powerful."

Apparently, he didn't notice, or it didn't bother him, that the pianist's family disappears into the camps after a lengthy setup detailing its various relationships and then is never mentioned again. There is not an iota of interest from our hero, the pianist himself. If memory serves, we follow him in his fatiguing travails for a long time in a long movie that seems to detail his every gesture and never once does the fate of his family come up again, even in his own mind.

This confounded me. It diminished the movie for me. Totally inexplicable was the heroizing of the music-loving German officer who takes pity on him near the end of the movie. It's not so much that the officer is heroized as a symbol of all "good" Germans, which is bad enough. After all, it's just one of those clichés to pluck the heartstrings, which you'd expect from Hollywood, though not from Polanski. It's the scroll after the film ends that bothers me the most.

The scroll memorializes the principal figures in the story, a reminder that the movie is based on real people. The scroll recounts what happened to each of them, especially the German officer, who by his inclusion is turned from a hero into a martyr. The scroll memorializes the time and place of his death. But does it memorialize the pianist's family? Not for a moment.

What happened to the pianist's mother, father, sister, brother? We know, of course. They disappeared into the camps. We saw them off, just as the pianist did, when they were being loaded like cattle into the train transport's freight cars about a third of the way into the movie.

So where did they die? When did they die? What camp? What year? There is nothing in the scroll to tell us. Nothing. It's as if their disappearance was forgotten not only by the pianist himself but by Polanski the filmmaker.

I found that an insult, an oversight so rotten that it soured the entire film for me. Even if you grant that their deaths could not be documented, that the oblivion of the camps swallowed them so completely their existence could not be tracked -- which I doubt -- that is still not a credible explanation. And if that is the case, then say so in the scroll. Don't forget them as though they never existed at all.

Nobody to my knowledge has ever mentioned this unforgivable omission, and that too is inexplicable. Am I being over-sensitive about this? Have a look at that scroll again, and tell me it's not disgusting.

Winter seems finally to have arrived this weekend, and the trees have pretty much gone bare. But I was buoyed the other evening by a panel discussion: "Cuba on the Verge" (the name taken from a recent book with that title, edited by Terry McCoy, who organized the event in midtown Manhattan).

What Cuba is verging on was not entirely clear, given the recent crackdown on dissidents by Fidel Castro, which culminated in the execution of three young Cubans hijackers, and the toughened anti-Cuba policy by Bush. It was quite a panel, though, and quite a crowd -- and the panelists, none of whom were politicians or foreign policy experts, thank God, had definite opinions.

The panelists: Novelist Russell Banks ("Cloudsplitter," "Continental Drift"), who spoke with Castro in a recent six-hour interview in Havana; Jon Lee Anderson, foreign correspondent, author ("Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life") and New Yorker staff writer; Achy Obejas, Cuban-American novelist ("Memory Mambo," "Days of Awe" ) and Chicago Tribune cultural writer; Pablo Medina, Cuban-born author ("The Return of Felix Nogara") who teaches at the New School; moderator Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc. Novelist William Kennedy ("Legs," "Ironweed"), who also met with Castro, introduced the discussion with a wrapup of Cuban historical developments.

The opinions: Castro believes, correctly, that Cuba is under siege by the United States -- he regards the trade embargo, for instance, as a war blockade -- and his siege mentality feeds not just on old fears like the failed CIA assassination attempts on his life in the '60s but on new fears engendered by the invasion of Iraq.

That Bush would put a military move on Cuba is deemed improbable even by Castro. At the very least, however, Castro has used the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a smokescreen to justify his crackdown on dissidents in the name of security. Meantime, prospective U.S. legislation ending the Cuba travel ban will be vetoed by Bush more likely than not, even though that has been made difficult by being attached to the transportation bill he needs to approve.

Asked why the U.S. embargo has failed after 40 years to accomplish its goal of forcing Castro from power, Banks said the single, most important factor was the creation of a proud, unshakable national mythology equalled by that of only two other nations in post-colonial history: the United States and Israel.

The national mythology developed in Cuba since the Revolution was and still is such a cohering force that despite any and all the disappointments, setbacks, miscalculations and brutalities visited upon them by Castro, by the Soviet Union's ill-fated support and by U.S. antagonism, Cubans believe in themselves as an identifiable people with an ingrained independence of spirit sturdier than any acquired ideology.

For anyone half familiar with Cuba, that's not a revelation perhaps, but it does crystalize an idea worth remembering. Banks pointed out that without the national mythology formed in the 40 years following the American Revolution -- much of it having coalesced around the heroic figure of George Washington before and after his death -- the U.S. might have been forced back under the rule of England or possibly come under the sway of France. The symbolic role of Che Guevera, especially since his martyrdom, has played out in a similar way in Cuba. (Banks did not go into the Israeli parallels, Ben-Gurion as well as the martyred heroes of that nation's mythology, but they seemed self-evident.)

Asked what will happen after Castro dies, Obejas pointed out that regardless of who takes over from him (not expected to happen soon, as he seems to have the energy of a much younger man and appears to be in excellent health), the single, most important factor will be what the U.S. government does. A Cuban government recognized by the United States would be much different from one that is not, whether it's headed by Fidel's designated successor, Raoul Castro, or by someone else. The greatest influence on daily life in Cuba, therefore, will depend on American politics more than its own.

Adam Cohen reminds us today that Wilfred Owen, the great British poet, died in battle 85 years ago this week. You can disagree with his claim that Owen is wrongly portrayed as antiwar -- "[H]e was not," Cohen writes. "What he stood for was seeing war clearly" -- but Cohen's larger point that George W. Bush has dishonored the dead and wounded of his administration's Iraq war is incontrovertible.

The headline on today's piece puts the issue in literary terms: "What World War I's Greatest Poet Would Say About Hiding Our War Dead." But make no mistake: It's an indictment. To spin the news and obscure reality, "President Bush is not attending soldier funerals, as previous presidents have," Cohen writes, "avoiding a television image that could sow doubts in viewers' minds. He avoids mentioning the American dead -- and the injured, who are seven times as numerous."

This is the same gung-ho president, of course, who was only too willing to burnish his TV image by dressing up in pilot's gear and landing by jet on an aircraft carrier returning from war duty in the Gulf. Meantime, the Pentagon prohibits photos and TV shots of coffins returning from the Iraqi war zone.

Last December in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, I wrote: "People who argue for going to war -- any war -- ought to read the poetry of Wilfred Owen. Let them read war reporter Chris Hedges' just-published "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," an antiwar cry from the heart that invokes these lines from Owen's World War I poem, 'Dulce et Decorum est,' on the death of a soldier in a gas attack":

If in smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria mori.

It's a side issue, but can anyone still believe that Owen was not antiwar after reading this rebuttal of the poet Horace's lines: "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori" (It is sweet and right to die for one's country)?

There's hope yet for a brighter weekend. I got a small grin out of Bush's call for democracy in the Middle East. It made me think of what put-upon Col. Wainwright Purdy III said in the 1956 movie "The Teahouse of the August Moon": "My job is to teach these natives the meaning of democracy. And they're going to learn democracy if I have to shoot every one of them!" (So there's no misunderstanding: This is not a movie recommendation. "Teahouse" was considered charming at the time, but it's very weak tea.)

Looking for an upbeat way to begin the weekend ain't easy ...

Not when another helicopter has gone down in Iraq, this time killing six American soldiers ...

Not when the death toll has risen from 15 to 16 in Sunday's helicopter shoot-down ...

Not when Shrub's rush to war in Iraq looks increasingly like a high-level conspiracy to ignore any other option ...

Not when Jessica Lynch says she feels "used" by the U.S. military, which "lied" about her and "manipulated" her story ...

Not when the independent 9/11 commission may have to subpoena Oval Office documents Shrub and his minions are still withholding from its investigation of intelligence failures involving the 9/11 attacks, because Shrub has reneged on his promise to cooperate fully ...

Not when Der Gropenfuhrer of Culifornia says he'll hire a private eye to investigate charges made against him by women who claim he sexually assaulted them, but < EM>he may not turn over the results to the state's attorney general because he distrusts him ...

Not when mendacity was the theme of the week and not just the refrain of both Tennessee Williams' southern-fried patriarch, Big Daddy, and Big Daddy's son, Brick the Thick, in the flawed Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" ...

POSTSCRIPT: It is Saturday morning. Words that might as well be emblazoned in Times Square -- "we have here another depressing example of official mendacity" -- pop out at me from this morning's lead editorial in The New York Times. Read it: "The Fruits of Secrecy." It's about more of this week's lies, i.e., Bush's broken vow to protect the environment.

Maybe my ears failed me. It's possible. Too many rock concerts? Too much time in the New York subway? A hearing test the other day revealed slight, high-frequency hearing loss due to nerve damage. The doc wasn't sure why. But I heard what I heard, and the only reason I wonder about it now is that I still find it hard to believe.

The president was on the tube making amends for not immediately expressing his sorrow over the death of 15 U.S. soldiers when their helicopter was shot down on Sunday. He began by offering a generic statement about his heart going out to all the families of U.S. men and women who've died in the war on terror.

Perhaps he sensed that a generic statement was putting his foot in his mouth. He wanted to show that he really meant what he said. So he pried his foot loose and became specific. "In this case," he said, making an impromptu mid-course correction, he grieved for the men who lost their lives. Who said he couldn't think on his feet? Hélas, as the French say, two of the 15 American G.I.'s who died on that helicopter were women. The president had merely compounded the error. He was generic and misinformed.

In his presidential memoir, "A World Transformed," written with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and published five years ago, George Bush the Elder explained why U.S. forces didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of Gulf War I:

Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

The last time I looked, way back in May in another life, the question about Wal-Mart was: Small-town savior or company gulag? At least that's the way I put it. Even the increasingly irritating David Brooks got off a funny satire about Wal-Mart's lad-magazine ban, "No Sex Magazines, Please, We're Wal-Mart Shoppers," although it was, in fact, about the shibboleths of liberal, not conservative, culture.

For instance, he teed off beautifully on the social consciousness of Trader Joe's, "the grocery store for people who wouldn't dream of buying free-range chicken broth from a company that didn't take a position against offshore oil drilling." But, as might have been expected, Brooks was unfailingly awed by Wal-Mart's reputation as "patriotic, community oriented, family-centered, rural and religious" -- and he never once mentioned Wal-Mart's spotty record as an employer.

Now that Wal-Mart is front-page news again following a recent nationwide raid on 60 of its stores -- federal agents arrested hundreds of illegal
immigrants working as low-paid, night janitors "forced to work seven days a week" with no time off, no overtime pay, no workers' compensation, no health insurance or any other protections -- maybe Brooks will take another crack at Wal-Mart, only this time with awe for its hypocrisy.

Is it too much to ask the nation's (and the world's) largest retailer to treat its workers decently, let alone obey the law? Wal-Mart has been dogged for a long time by stories about shabby treatment of employees. I received hundreds of e-mails from people who worked for Wal-Mart. The main complaints were that it discriminated against women employees in compensation and promotion, cheated employees out of fully earned wages and violated the rights of disabled people in its hiring practices.

Trusting soul that I am, I believed them. But just to be sure they were telling the truth, I went looking for documented evidence of such claims. It was easy to find. One 2001 class-action lawsuit brought in New York state on behalf of 80,000 employees charged that Wal-Mart systematically avoided paying them earned overtime wages. Similar cases were pending in other states. A report from The New York Times of Feb. 16, 2003, detailed a lawsuit that could become "the largest employment discrimination class action in American history." It alleged discrimination against female Wal-Mart employees, claiming they are paid lower wages than men and consistently passed over for promotion.

"More than 40 lawsuits are pending that accuse Wal-Mart of pressuring or forcing employees to work unpaid hours off the clock," the report noted. Wal-Mart officials derided all these lawsuits, of course, though a jury in Oregon found Wal-Mart guilty of forcing 400 employees to work off the clock.

Similarly, Wal-Mart officials deride the latest allegations. They deny knowing that illegal immigrants worked at their stores because the janitors who were arrested had been outsourced, that is, hired by subcontractors. Two previous roundups, in 1998 and 2001, appear to have escaped their memories. Wal-Mart and its subcontractors also seem to have forgotten to pay taxes for these workers. But I'd bet Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott didn't forget to collect every penny of the more than $18 million he was paid in 2002.

Did I say the other day that David Brooks is still trying to find his rhythm as a New York Times op-ed columnist? I was too kind. Judging by his effort this morning, "A Burden Too Heavy to Put Down" (wisely positioned by the editors below the fold), the guy's melody has become all too apparent. Listen to it. Here's the first verse:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!

To buck up the Bush administration and defend U.S. policy in Iraq, Brooks writes:

The fact is, we Americans do not like staring into the face of evil. It is in our progressive and optimistic nature to believe that human beings are basically good, or at least rational. When we stare into a cave of horrors, whether it is in Somalia, Beirut or Tikrit, we see a tangled morass we don't understand. Our instinct is to get out as quickly as possible.

That explains what's happening. It's not just the good guys against the bad guys. It's the angels against the devils. The age-old magic of demonizing the enemy simplifies the issue for Brooks: "They are the scum of the earth." And not only that: "Their scumminess is our great advantage." So it's the innocent Americans vs. the evildoers. But to beat the evildoers, the innocent Americans will have to commit evil themselves. "Inevitably," Brooks writes, "there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause."

The angelic Americans, good Christians to the core, must be kept from waffling. The righteousness of the cause is biblical. A burden too heavy to put down is not just our cross to bear; it is the price we pay for original sin. "The president will have to remind us," Brooks writes, "that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action if we are to defeat the killers who confront us." This is not a Christian crusade, folks. It's just good ol' patriotism.

All sing now:

At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell's foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.

A friend messages: "Aren't you bothered by the fact that at a time when too many children in this country go to bed hungry, when senior citizens cannot afford medical care, when soldiers are being sent home from Iraq in boxes, the U.S. Senate held public hearings on college football's Bowl Championship Series? And you wonder why people blandly accept George W. Bush? We've exactly the government we deserve."

That got me to thinking: Have you reached the point of talking back to the network television news programs? I have ... whenever Gee Dubya Shrub comes on to tell me how wonderful things are in that "dangerous place" called Iraq ... whenever Rummy comes on shows like "Name That Tune" -- sorry, "This Week" and "Meet the Press" -- to say how "tragic days" (such as Sunday, when 16 U.S. soldiers died in the downing of a helicopter) are "necessary."

Lately, whenever the just-passed $87 billion appropriation for Iraq is mentioned, and especially when the $20 billion grant is mentioned, an involuntary reaction wells up. Nasty words form like cartoon bubbles on my lips. This sort of backtalk is no help of course, only a symptom of my desperation. It's a measure of outrage and frustration lying too close to the surface.

A Washington Post-ABC poll now shows that a majority of Americans are beginning to feel the same way (scroll down to fourth paragraph). The reason -- and here I'm taking the liberty of excerpting the words and transposing the reference points of one of the great writers of the 20th century -- is that almost every American between the end of World War II and 9/11 lived in the tacit belief that civilization would last forever. You might be individually fortunate or unfortunate but you had inside you the feeling that nothing would ever fundamentally change. But since 9/11 that sense of security has not existed. Osama bin Laden and the terrorist jihad shattered it as the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis and even Vietnam had failed to shatter it. We've been living in a world in which not only one's life but one's whole scheme of values is constantly menaced. In such circumstances detachment is not possible. You cannot take a purely aesthetic interest in a disease you are dying from; you cannot feel dispassionately about a man who is about to cut your throat.

In fact, that passage is taken from a 1941 BBC broadcast on art and propaganda by George Orwell. (Read the original.) He was talking about Europeans, not Americans; about the period between 1890 and 1930, not 1945 and 2001; about the shattering impact of Hitler and the Depression compared to World War I and the Russian Revolution, not about Osama bin Laden and the terrorist jihad compared to the Cold War and so on. Admittedly, Orwell himself would not countenance such distortions of time and place. You can't change historical particulars and expect the same meaning to hold up.

But it's remarkable how well the transposition seems to fit. Uncanny even. It's why, when the president and his minions patronize me, when they treat me like an idiot too stupid or trusting to call them on their "unshakable" determination and pigheaded lies, when they claim for their own political aims and not my safety to be dealing with the terrorists holding the knife at my throat, that I go around the bend and find myself talking back to an inanimate object.