(Display Name not set)April 2004 Archives

Is someone at CNN reading us (and taking notes)? You decide.

CNN flashed these words across the tube on Thursday morning: "not under oath," "no stenographer," "no transcript," "no recording."

Straight Up on Wednesday morning in < FONT color=#003399>LIP SERVICE: "Not under oath. Not in public. No recording. No transcript. Two note takers only."

Both of us were referring, of course, to the ventriloquist and his dummy's performance for the 9/11 commission.

Thanks to Alessandra Stanley, whose TV Watch reports we love, for pointing out CNN's bulletins. Her eye for detail and her salty comments are always rewarding.

Stanley's lede this morning:

If an important meeting takes place in the Oval Office and there are no television cameras to record it, did the meeting matter?

And her conclusion:

[T]he nonvisual event was so anathema to television that at one point, the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan said it seemed as if "the event took place in the 18th century."

By the way, it's now unclear how many note takers there actually were. Reports have varied. It turns out that all the commissioners were at least allowed to take notes. We don't know, however, what they may have scribbled down. "Their notebooks were taken from them before they left the session," The New York Times reports, "with the White House saying they would be returned after being reviewed for classified information."

A reminder from yesterday: If you want to see the dummy at his most inarticulate, just go to CNN.com and click the video link (on the right) next to the headline "Bush 9/11 session 'marvelous'." It's absolutely hilarious.

Give the BushCheneySloganator a try: "It's unpredictable / I hope you have the time of your life."

If you've heard this joke before (and even if you haven't), forgive us:

George W. Bush, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso have all died. They arrive at the Pearly Gates more or less simultaneously.

Einstein is the first to present himself to Saint Peter, who asks him, "Can you prove who you really are?" Einstein proceeds to describe his general theory of relativity with arcane mathematical symbols. Saint Peter is suitably impressed. "You really are Einstein! Welcome to heaven!" he says.

Just then Picasso arrives. Saint Peter asks for proof that Picasso is the great artist he's heard so much about. Picasso proceeds to sketch out a truly stunning mural of bulls, satyrs and nude women with a few strokes of chalk. Saint Peter claps. "Surely you are the great artist you claim to be! Come on in!" he says.

They're still standing at the Pearly Gates when George W. Bush appears. Saint Peter says, "Einstein and Picasso easily proved their identities. How can you prove yours?" Looking bewildered, George says, "Who are Einstein and Picasso?" Saint Peter shakes his head and smiles. "Come on in, George."

Romance Mathematics

Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

Office Arithmetic

Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

Shopping Math

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need.

General Equations & Statistics

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

Happiness

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

Longevity

Married men live longer than single men, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

Propensity to Change

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.

Discussion Technique

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

To our regret, we missed "The Jesus Factor," which knocked a friend of ours out of his chair the other night. But not to worry: "Frontline" says the whole thing will be posted Saturday online.

Here's a taste: "On the day that George W. Bush was sworn into his second term as governor of Texas, friend and adviser Dr. Richard Land recalls Bush making an unexpected pronouncement.

"The day he was inaugurated there were several of us who met with him at the governor's mansion," says Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "And among the things he said to us was, 'I believe that God wants me to be president.'"

Now, we've all heard about the little fucker's mission from God before. But seeing it documented -- with items like his official Texas < EM>"Jesus Day" Proclamation -- is like being catapulted into an adjacent universe, we're told. So don't forget your seatbelt.

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday about whether U.S. citizens may be imprisoned without trial or legal representation if they're declared by the little fucker to be "enemy combatants" in the war on terror.

The righter-than-rightwing editorial page of The Wall Street Journal warned the court not to let its "sense of its own importance" lead it to believe "it can do a better job of running the war on terror than an elected chief executive." Elected? How about appointed? I didn't hear the Journal complaining about the court's self-importance back then, when the same court did the appointing.

The 9/11 commission hears today what he and his crony in chief have to say to justify how they screwed up the war on terror from the moment they took office.

White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales likes the fact that there will be < EM>no verbatim account of the 9/11 commission's meeting in the Oval Office with the little fucker and his crony in chief. After all, it's the little fucker who insisted on that condition in the first place, and we all know how desperate he is to get to the bottom of things. Or as Gonzales blithely told CNN, "information will make ... its way into the [commission] report in some fashion or another, I suspect." How nice.

Meantime, 10 more U.S. soldiers have died today in the little fucker's war of choice.

I see that fellow ArtsJournal blogger Terry Teachout "watched the first part of 'The Letter,' William Wyler's 1940 film version of Somerset Maugham's short story." He offers faint praise: "It's not bad, and Bette Davis (of whom I'm not usually a fan) was quite good, but I'd rather read Maugham than watch him, so I switched off after Davis spilled the beans to her stiff-uppah-lip lawyer." Even if I weren't Wyler's biographer, I would feel obliged to come to the film's defense. It's better than "not bad," Terry. As I wrote in "A Talent for Trouble":

The picture gets off to a breathtaking start with a long opening sequence. It is a calm tropical night. Light from a full moon floods the plantation. The camera moves steadily, panning through the trees and over the sleeping natives in their hammocks, then through their crowded bunks. The air is thick with humidity. The silence builds. The shadowed darkness menaces. A sudden shot rings out, frightening a bird from its perch. A man stumbles down the front stairs of the main house. A woman follows. She fires a pistol into his limp body until she has no bullets left.

Wyler said he wanted to show everything in a single camera move, and this two-minute, unedited shot was regarded in its time as one of the most admired artistic feats in Hollywood movies. It remains so. "Without a spoken word or a single cut," as I wrote, it "establishes the mood, the scenario and the main character." What's more "Wyler created the entire sequence out of his imagination from little more than a single sentence in the screenplay."

Howard Koch, who wrote the screenplay, "marveled at Wyler's instinct for staging." He especially admired "the precocious mix of film noir effects and straightforward melodrama not just because of nuances that illuminated character and established subtext but because of symbolic details that enlarged the drama." In "The Letter" Wyler had a field day "exploring murder and sexual infidelity, erotic tension and psychological suspense, class snobbery and racial hypocrisy."

Enough said.

Don Wycliff wants to know: "Why is the Democrat-loving, Republican-hating, pond scum-swilling, lower-than-the-rug-on-the-floor, biased, liberal [curl upper lip when pronouncing] press protecting George W. Bush?" Good question. It's bugged me for a long time, too.

To put it another way, Wycliff has an interesting take today in the Chicago Tribune on how "an inarticulate president" is saved from himself by professional journalists who translate "Bushspeak" for their readers. (Thank you for the link, Romenesko.)

Reporters, he writes, are "trained to seek meaning and the meaningful" and so focus on winnowing the sublime from the ridiculous in "any utterance by the president." Those who cover him, therefore, have routinely "overlooked the mangled syntax, penetrated the rhetorical fog and extracted some usable lines from the dross and manufactured stories that had the president sounding, if not quite statesmanlike, then at least intelligible."

The why of it is more complicated, however. Wycliff writes: "Ideally, we would have a president so articulate that we would never be in doubt as to what he said." Since that's not the case, "this confronts us with the question whether our purpose is to transmit to readers what the president means when he speaks out or to simply relate what he says. I have always felt that transmitting meaning is paramount."

There we disagree. Reporters shouldn't be translating what the little fucker says into what he means or what they think he means. If they want to hold his hand, let them join his staff.

Postscript: If you want to see the guy at his most inarticulate, just go to CNN.com and click the video link (on the right) next to the headline Bush: 'We answered all' 9/11 panel questions. It's absolutely hilarious.

This just in: "I'm laughing out loud at Wednesday's blog," Straight Up reader Joan Daniels writes. "By the way, during his what-was-it 3rd prime-time press conference in almost four years a couple of weeks ago, updating us on the current situation in Iraq, his inarticulate comments were unbelievable as usual. As a matter of fact, his command of the English language actually seemed to have further deteriorated, if that's possible. There were so many misstatements to choose from. ...

"How can he be the President? Doesn't his inability to utter an intelligent sentence concern anyone, even if in favor of his policies? Isn't he the Leader of the Free World? How about his staff? Are they sitting in their seats grimacing as he speaks? I'm embarrassed that he's my President!"

Not under oath. Not in public. No recording. No transcript. Two note takers only. Those are the peculiar ground rules when the ventriloquist and his dummy take their act to the 9/11 commission tomorrow morning. If that's not clear enough, a White House adviser to the dummy explains: "He is not testifying, he is talking to them. A transcript implies testimony." Advice to the note takers: Brush up your shorthand and sharpen your pencils. Advice to the commission: Make sure the ventriloquist drinks a glass of water when the dummy is talking.

Herewith the latest from Leon Freilich:

INCURIOUS GEORGE

"This is historic times," he notes
In one of his more memorable quotes.
The rugged cowboy CEO,
Not known for his desire to know,
Distrusts ideas and words alike,
Shunning both on his exercise bike.

Kyle Gann, postclassical composer extraordinaire and fellow ArtsJournal blogger, says he gets no kicks from public performances of his music. So where does he get them? Alone, in the studio, writing his stuff. Here's the stuff he writes. We get our kicks from listening to it, especially his piano studies. Stuff like "Nude Rolling Down an Escalator," "Bud Ran Back Out" and "Folk Dance for Henry Cowell." And here's something for adventurous opera buffs: an excerpt from the chamber opera "Cinderella's Bad Magic."

For any folks who have nothing to do and no money to do it on: There's a free prepostclassical concert Wednesday at 1 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall (Broadway at 66th St.) in Manhattan. We have it on good authority that several postgrad Juilliard conductors are to take turns leading the Juilliard Conductors' Orchestra in Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Rossini's Overture to Italiana in Algeri, Beethoven's Egmont Overture, and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.

We don't usually get to read what people in the Ozarks are reading. When an editorial from last week's Arkansas Times came our way, we realized they're reading what we're reading. Have a look: Scroll down to the second bullet or digest it here. It's taken from an interview with John Hess, author of "My Times: A Memoir of Dissent", who's been out and about taking on the Big Apple bible:

One thing editors of The New York Times and I keep trying to do is knock down the notion that The Times is a liberal paper. But we go at it differently. They do it by stuff like calling the Nazi groper Schwarzenegger a moderate Republican, by apologizing for implying that George W. Bush might not be telling the truth. I've read the Times over 70 years -- worked there for 24 -- and never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don't get me started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal? For one thing, it depends on how you define liberal. Many good people define it as favoring freedom of choice, protection of the environment, separation of church and state, an end to capital punishment and our savage drug laws. Good causes -- the Times says it's for all of them. Yet when push comes to shove, it backs candidates who take the other side. It's allergic to progressives -- always has been. As I relate in 'My Times,' Wall Street bankrolled Adolph Ochs -- another groper, by the way -- to keep the Times going as a conservative Democratic paper to beat back the progressives of the day. It's been the same ever since.

Ouch!

Unless I'm wrong, pandas at the zoo get more press attention than the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. This year's winners were named over the weekend. They included Henry Wiencek in history, for "An Imperfect God," and Ishmael Reed, who received the Robert Kirsch Award for "Blues City: A Walk in Oakland." 

Did anyone besides the L.A. Times take notice? The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and U.S.A. Today didn't. If all politics is local, book politics is localer.

Other winners were Pete Dexter for "Train" (fiction); Neil Smith for "American Empire" (biography); Mark Haddon for "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" (first fiction); Anthony Hecht for "Collected Later Poems" (poetry); Ross Terrill for "The New Chinese Empire" (current-interest nonfiction); Jennifer Donnelly for "A Northern Light" (young adult fiction), and Randy J. Hilts for "Protecting America's Health" (science and technology).

Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway wrote a tribute, "On the American Dead in Spain" (scroll to page 37), to the 800 members of the American Lincoln Brigade who gave their lives for the Republican cause against Franco's fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

His tribute begins: "The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight. ... It was cold that February when they died and since then the dead have not noticed the change of seasons." It ends: "They are part of the earth now. ... Those who have entered it honorably, and no men ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain, already have achieved immortality."

Was Hemingway right? Will they be memorialized forever? Ask the surviving members of the Brigade, who will remember them at a reunion in New York on Sunday, along with others of a later generation who hold to Hemingway's conviction. The reunion, organized by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive, is to feature keynote speaker Victor Navasky, publisher of The Nation, the musical revue "Patriots Act!" by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and protest songs performed by the redoubtable Barbara Dane. (She's been described by music critic Leonard Feather as "Bessie Smith in Stereo.")

Nearly 3,000 Americans joined the Brigade, which was organized in 1936 to provide support for the Spanish Republic when the U.S. government refused to assist it against a fascist rebellion. Like other volunteers from more than 50 countries, they hoped in vain to stop the spread of fascism and avert a second world war.

"Patriots Act!" is billed as a dramatic presentation of historical texts and songs of struggle that tell the story of patriotic dissent from the Depression era of the Spanish Civil War through the current wars. The event, beginning at 1:30 p.m., is to be held at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 60 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Wooster Streets) in Manhattan. About 20 members of the Brigade are expected to attend.

Tickets are still available. For information, call 212-674-5552, 212-674-5398, or contact Howard Wuelfing at Howlin' Wuelf Media, 215-428-9119 (howlingwuelf@aol.com). For information regarding the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Achive, a nonprofit educational organization celebrating its 25th anniversary, contact Julia Newman, 212-674-5398 (exemplaryone@aol.com).

The archive is considered "the most comprehensive historical record of American involvement in the Spanish Civil War," according to New York University, which acquired the collection in 2001. It holds the Brigade's office files as well as the personal diaries, oral histories, autobiographical writings and memorabilia of the veterans.

I wish I'd known this woman. Have a look at some of her columns and memorable words. Robin Toner's touching obituary quotes her as saying: "I should confess that I always felt a little sorry for people who didn't work for newspapers." She said it before "the recent troubles," to use an Irish phrase for the Blairs and Kelleys and their ilk. But I can't imagine even their malfeasance changing her feeling.

Postscript: Kevin Spacey also has < FONT color=#003399>a thing for newspapers. In London, where he "just unveiled plans for his first season as artistic director at the Old Vic," he went so far as to join the fold of ink-stained wretches by editing today's Kevin Spacey issue in The Guardian's continuing series of special reports on the arts.

They were trying to be funny. Publishers Weekly's PW Daily for Booksellers actually published this in an email distributed to subscribers:

Books Too Boring Compared to TV

Trade book sales fell 100% to $0.0 in 2003, according to the Association of American Publishers, as a bumper crop of compelling reality shows ranging from Average Joe to Queer Eye made reading seem boring in comparison. The figures, released today, sharply conflict with year-end statistics released by the AAP just yesterday, which indicated that trade book sales rose 43.2% to $13 trillion.

An AAP spokesperson explained that the 2003 figures unveiled yesterday were found to be incorrect under the organization's newest formula, by which annual book sales totals have been re-calculated going back to 1970. The spokesperson explained that the sales growth and totals have been refigured against a baseline of $0.0 in 1970. "Before the 1970s, cable television and home video games were not widely available, so book sales really didn't count," the spokesperson commented.

AAP numbers for 2003 also differ from statistics released by market research firm Ipsos-NPD. An NPD spokesperson cleared up the discrepancy by pointing out that its numbers are based on a weighted formula in which purchases of books bought only to be displayed on a coffee table to impress visitors were not counted, while books that consumers really wanted to read (defined by NPD as "bathroom books") counted twice.

In other statistics news, 2003 chain store book sales also were also revised downward, after it was discovered that the majority of revenue attributed to book sales was actually brought in by scones and cappuccino. The U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release its 2003 figures as soon as it finalizes its definition of "book."

The seemingly contradictory nature of this latest batch of statistics has led to renewed calls for more reliable industry figures. For its part, BookScan has issued a press release offering to clear up the confusion for anyone willing to "pay through the nose" for the information.

Hello?

Back in March, we took notice of the Dieter Roth retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. ArtsJournal colleague John Perreault recently reviewed it and quoted Roth dissing the Fluxus group with which he was associated:

In fact, Roth hated Fluxus: "It was the club of the untalented who made a verbal virtue of their lack of talent so that nobody could say they had no talent," he told an interviewer. "The modesty that they ascribed to themselves was actually a good insight in that sense. Because they had to be modest because they were so incapable."

Ain't that priceless?

The Guardian in London has launched a week of arts coverage by guest editors, and it's not to be missed. On Monday the < FONT color=#003399>Franz Ferdinand issue had "a different take" on tabloid newspapers' topless pictures (an article < FONT color=#003399>about censorship by the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who shot this bottomless image); a tale of < FONT color=#003399>music lessons (have they improved?); questions about (mostly British) < FONT color=#003399>rock'n'roll mythology (is it at an end?), the merits of < FONT color=#003399>two aesthetics (minimalist or maximalist?), the < FONT color=#003399>stairway to hell (why so many musicians self-destruct) and -- how could it not? -- a < FONT color=#003399>debate on blogging (have Weblogs revolutionized the media?). Tuesday's < FONT color=#003399>Sam Taylor-Wood issue led with < FONT color=#003399>fashion ("Meeting the Queen was like falling in love"), and today's < FONT color=#003399>Max Stafford-Clark issue, so far the most parochial, asks whether Britain has < FONT color=#003399>culture beyond its main artistic centers.

Book critic Michiko Kakutani has the fine habit of writing accurate reviews. I trust them. The other day, though, her review of "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" struck a weird note. Was Stalin, as she seemed to allege, a classical pianist?

Quoting the book's author, Simon Sebag Montefiore, she wrote:

Stalin, Mr. Montefiore tells us, was a voracious reader of literature: his granddaughter remembered him reading Gogol, Chekhov, Hugo, Thackeray and Balzac. He calmed himself down by "repeatedly playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23" and took pleasure in cultivating roses and mimosas. Like Hitler, he was also an ardent film buff — among his favorites were "It Happened One Night," "Mission to Moscow," John Ford westerns and anything by Charlie Chaplin.

Literateur? OK. Anybody, even a mass murderer, can fall in love with books. Gardener? Why not? You don't have to be nice Mrs. Minniver. Bulgaria cultivates the world's finest roses. Loves movies? Who doesn't? But did Stalin actually play the piano concerto? Or did he play a recording of it? Big difference.

Still . . . 

I'm grateful to Kakutani for her candid review of Alice Walker's latest novel, "Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart." The review began:

If this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with "The Color Purple," it's hard to imagine how it could have been published. [It] is a remarkably awful compendium of inanities.

Kakutani went on to list them: "New Age inanities," "feminist inanities," "flower children inanities" and "plain old bad writing." I've rarely seen such a withering review by any of the Gray Lady's critics. 

Though I haven't read the novel, judging by the silly non-sequitors I heard Walker deliver last fall in a vapid, rambling address to adoring Barnard College undergrads, Kakutani's verdict must be on the money. Walker may have gotten one thing right, however: She named the novel's heroine Kate Talkingtree.

Apparently a different one from Donald ("You bet!") Rumsfeld, whose command of verbal tactics challenges the basic meaning of words. For instance, when asked Tuesday whether the Pentagon was considering the deployment of more troops to Iraq, he replied: "Are we considering it? No. But have we prepared? You bet."

It would take the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary to parse the difference, and even they couldn't do it. Not when Rumsfeld also said that in case the top U.S. military commander in Iraq wants more troops "we've made arrangements to have them replaced" and "were [he] to require still additional forces, we have thought through that as well."

Get it? Mr. You Bet is not considering additional troop deployments. He's merely made arrangements and thought them through. God help us if we ever get used to his equivocations. Unless our "hopes and dreams" are no longer owned by him, or Mr. Waffles, or Crony in Chief Cheney, or anyone else in the little fucker's administration, we're headed for worse troubles than troop deployments in Iraq.

Which reminds me. Have you heard of the NO-CARB Diet for 2004?

NO C-heney
NO A-shcroft
NO R-umsfeld
NO B-ush

Oh, and absolutely NO RICE. This diet should take you through Janurary 2005.

Strange to say, one of Straight Up's most faithful readers is a raving rightwing lunatic who sends nicely designed but anonymous emails telling us how great we are, except for what he considers our raving leftwing lunacy. Because we're so bloody fair-minded, we thought we'd give him the soapbox we keep in the corner for people like him.

He doesn't say exactly, but we think the message that came from him yesterday is his response to our comments about the death of Iraqi civilians listed by IRAQ BODY COUNT. We're posting the message for its entertainment value. It also shows, if nothing else, what sane people are up against:

In the two years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people. We lost 600 soldiers, an average of 300 a year. Bush did all this abroad while not allowing another terrorist attack at home. Worst president in history? Come on!

The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but... It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation. We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records. It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Teddy Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick. It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!!!! Our military and the Commander-in-Chief is GREAT! PASS IT ON.

Makes you want to re-think reality. Besides, we don't know where he got this business about "worst president in history." We never said it. We think the  little fucker doesn't even rise to that standard.

Always good to see the editorial page of The New York Times ratifying our snap judgments. The editorial board must be genteel, of course. It cannot be as blunt as we were about Colin Powell, but its considered opinion this morning is pretty much the same.

This is what we said yesterday:

So he warned our dopey Maximum Leader about owning Iraq. Let's not make the U.S. Secretary of State a hero. Isn't he the man of principle who went to the U.N. with so-called proof of WMD in Iraq, which he in fact doubted? Didn't his diplomatic charade come a month after he knew the decision to go to war for all intents and purposes had already been taken?

This is what the Times Web site said in its summary of today's lead editorial: "If Secretary of State Colin Powell thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea, his inaction is puzzling and disappointing." Such puzzlement. Such disappointment. Can't you see the sorrowful looks in their faces as the ladies and gentlemen of the editorial board gather for their meeting in the clubby atmosphere of the Times building's 10th floor?

The editorial itself is headlined "Which Powell Is Which?" There's no gainsaying that. It notes:

What we seem to have once again with Mr. Powell is a desire to have it both ways, to be seen as a loyal member of the Bush team, but also as a wise man who knew all along that the Iraq war would be a mistake. If the Woodward version is correct, Mr. Powell should have spoken up more than a year ago.

We also said of Mr. Waffles:

Not to put too fine a point on it, is he not the guy who went along with "the Gestapo," his own term for "the civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to [Dick] Cheney," according to Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack"?

Now, according to CNN this morning and others, and as the Times reports separately from its editorial, Powell has "disputed Mr. Woodward's account in several respects." He said "he had an excellent relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney and that he did not recall referring to officals at the Pentagon loyal to Mr. Cheney as the 'Gestapo office.'"

Notice that he didn't deny the reference; he simply didn't remember saying it. Mr. Waffles is still waffling.

So Colin Powell didn't want to go to war. So he warned our dopey Maximum Leader about owning Iraq. Let's not make the U.S. Secretary of State a hero. Isn't he the man of principle who went to the U.N. with so-called proof of WMD in Iraq, which he in fact doubted? Didn't his diplomatic charade come a month after he knew the decision to go to war for all intents and purposes had already been taken?

Not to put too fine a point on it, is he not the guy who went along with "the Gestapo," his own term for "the civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to [Dick] Cheney," according to Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack"?

Meantime, the death toll keeps rising. The latest count of American soldiers who've died in Iraq -- 701 as of today, 100 so far in this month alone -- is nothing like a complete tabulation. As long as we're counting, do you have any idea of how many Iraqi civilians have died? A friend of mine guesses it's in the hundreds of thousands, a number so high "even Kipling would not be pleased." That would put us in Saddam's league.

Before the invasion, Fred Kaplan wrote in Slate that a "leaked U.N. study calculates that 100,000 civilians will die during the coming war, plus 400,000 after the war." But that estimate and others, such as one by a Russian military analyst who predicted 500,000 Iraqis would die, were based on historical extrapolations -- and so were merely theoretical.

Have a look at the actual numbers gathered by IRAQ BODY COUNT. It estimates that as of yesterday a minimum of 8,875 and a maximum of 10,725 civilians in Iraq have been "reported killed by the military intervention."

The IBC Project explains the rationale and methodology of the tabulation in great detail and gives the sort of assurances that lend it credibility. Among other things, it says:

Casualty figures are derived solely from a comprehensive survey of online media reports. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.

And this:

In the current occupation phase this database includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.

Here's a chart that identifies Iraqi civilian deaths by name, age, sex, place, date, method and source of information. IRAQ BODY COUNT is not complete, but it brings together in a single data base scattered reports of the war's Iraqi casualties too rarely noted by the American public.

Footnote: Our designation for George W. Bush these many months has been "our Maximum Leader" or "our fearless Maximum Leader" or as written today, "our dopey Maximum Leader," with the obvious intent to ridicule.

But we've been thinking about an email received from a bemused reader (scroll to the postscript) after last Tuesday's presidential press conference, which said "this little fucker will be content with nothing less than Gotterdammerung."

We not only agree, we're wondering whether "the little fucker" should be our Maximum Leader's new designation. Though it's reminiscent of "the little chap," the blithely cane-twirling Chaplin character who leaves disaster in his wake, we're hoping the comic ridicule would work. What do you think?

Postscript: "In Woodward's portrait," Evan Thomas writes in Newsweek, "President Bush is single-minded, and possibly simple-minded, in his resolve. He seems to have relied more on divine guidance than the considered opinions of his top advisers. Bush told Woodward that as he approached the final decision to go to war, 'I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will ... I'm surely not going to justify war based on God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible.'"

Divine guidance for the dopey little fucker? Will he be hearing voices next?

What Calvin Trillin's poetry is to The Nation, Leon Freilich's is to Straight Up. Noting our question earlier today -- we asked for thoughts on "whether 'the little fucker' should be our Maximum Leader's new designation" -- Leon penned us this verse:

BUNGLE BOY

"The little fucker" goes too far;
The guy ain't quite a bloody czar.
Something more moderate is due
The man with a hyper-limited view,
Something that catches the bungling touch
That's gotten this nation in deep dutch.
So how about Mr. Dopey
For someone who can't possibly copey?

Love that title, too. In return, we offer music for Leon's ears and the pleasure of anyone else who enjoys The Andrews Sisters doing the song he had in mind as much as we do.

It was '60s and '70s hard rock. Jason Keyser, the AP reporter who filed the news story from Falluja that U.S. troops challenged insurgents to come out and fight by blasting rock music at them, identified AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix as the artists whose music they used. 

That at least shows excellent taste and probably that the troops got a kick out of the music themselves, which they wouldn't have got from the< FONT color=#003399> rappers I guessed at. Tactically, though, it makes you wonder why they didn't blast some really lousy beats.

Keyser also points out that American popular music has been weaponized before -- "to help flush out" Manuel Noriega after the December 1989 invasion of Panama, and in 1993 when the FBI "blared progressively more irritating tunes" at the Branch Davidians during a standoff in Waco, Texas.

Wrapping the week: U.S. troops reportedly blasted rock music at the insurgents in Falluja to provoke them into a fight. Now that's an idea that Rummy, Wolfie and the boys never thought of: weaponizing American pop culture to win the war in Iraq. What beats do you think the troops used? 2Pac's? Eminem's? 50 Cent's? Snoop Dogg's? Jay-z's? Notorious B.I.G.'s? Ludacris's? Dr. Dre's? Nelly's? Ja Rule's? Was it -- this is just a guess -- "2Pac's Greatest Hits" or 50 Cent's "No Mercy, No Fear"? And will the Pentagon pay royalties?

"Whatever else there is to say, the guy is simply out of his league," we said. Charles Pierce, sitting in for Eric Alterman thank you, said the else today in funny, exquisite remarks:

Holy Mother Of God

God knows we've all made happy sport of the Avignon Presidency, especially in this little corner of the neighborhood, but I have never been afraid of the guy the way I was the other night. Is there a single sliver of doubt left that the man couldn't craft a coherent thought if you spotted him the subject, the verb, and the unlimited use of Peggy Noonan? He marches blithely on, armed with his own invincible ignorance, like one of the idiots at the end of the bar who believes he was abducted by aliens in the employ of the Knights Templar.

"People who hide something are people who have something to hide."

Jeebus Christmas, how do they stand there and listen to this scary charlatan? I've heard athletes who never got out of high school evince more complexity of thought 10 minutes after losing a playoff game. And without notes, too.

Tomorrow's a big day for Harrison Ford. The theater where he made his West Coast stage debut, The Laguna Playhouse, is to honor him as its "most distinguished alumnus."

The playhouse -- which was founded in Laguna Beach, Calif., in 1920, making it one the nation's oldest continuing theater companies -- doesn't say who the other alumnae are. Therefore it's hard to compare, but "most distinguished" sounds about right. So does "most famous," "most handsome," "richest," "best former carpenter" and "biggest deal."

According to Playhouse executive director Richard Stein, Ford appeared in "John Brown's Body," a poetic drama by Stephen Vincent Benet, directed by Douglas Rowe. The production ran for 12 performances (March 2-13) in 1965. The playbill called him "Harry" and described him as follows:

A newcomer both to California and Laguna Beach, Harry brings with him an impressive background in theater. At college, such roles as MacHeath in "Threepenny Opera," El Gallo in "The Fantasticks" and Mr. Antrobus in "Skin of our Teeth" brought rave reviews and with it overtures from several little theater groups. As a result, shows such as "Damn Yankees," "Sunday in New York," "Dark of the Moon" and "Little Mary Sunshine" followed. Harry's goal is to be a professional actor. We wish him good luck and hope to see him back here for more shows.

Harry never appeared at the Laguna Playhouse again. But the whole point of honoring the prodigal son is to help raise money for the troupe. When it comes to fund-raising, loyalty has a long leash. (By the way, who knew he had such a sweet tooth for musical comedy?)

Marc Weisblott was one of blogland's savviest culture commentators, but he quit blogging. So said I on Monday. He read the item and on Tuesday began posting again. This time he's calling his posts radio weisblogg, "news and commentary about the evolution of AM/FM etc." Have a look while it lasts. You'll see what I meant. ...

The Burlington Free Press, in Vermont, was the first daily newspaper I worked at (as a feature writer). They even put me to work writing the occasional editorial. This item, "Banned in Burlington" (via Poynter), would have caught my attention anyway. But it's particularly lousy news for someone who was proud to work there once upon a time. ...

This op-ed piece also grabbed my eye: "Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it." It's from February in the San Francisco Chronicle, but very timely in view of George Tenet's testimony earlier this week before the 9/11 commission. And it's by the historian Chalmers Johnson, the same guy who wrote with chilling prescience in "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire," a year before the 9/11 attacks:

Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The innocent of the twenty-first century are going to harvest unexpected blowback disasters from the imperialist escapades of recent decades. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price -- individually and collectively -- for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Before the damage of heedless triumphalist acts and the triumphalist rhetoric and propaganda that goes with them becomes irreversible, it is important to open a new discussion of our global role ...

Has the damage become irreversible? Johnson thinks so, as noted earlier this week.

Jazz drummer Max Roach's remark on music education and rap -- "People who voted for defunding of music education programs in public schools are getting what they paid for" -- drew comments. One reader wrote that the poet John Ashbery said somewhere: "The only thing worse than rap is French rap." Anybody know where? Another reader, the composer Charles Mac Dermed, wrote:

Were it my prerogative, I'd see to it that "GRUPPEN" by Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, a 21 min. symphonic piece for 3 full orchestras + supplementary percussion, was daily performed at noon in Union Square, S.F., during which performance streets surrounding Union Square would be barricaded against vehicular traffic and bicyclists could circle while the spatially distributed instrumentalists play.

As an underpinning for this institution of "GRUPPEN" concerts, the principle responsibility of the Bay Area schools would be to train musicians for this everyday occurrence. Sooner or later the mind of S.F. citizenry would be enlightened by exposure to this phenomenon. I can attest to the enlightening efficacy of this monumental work by Stockhausen. For me it is the supernal culmination of human culture.

A friend of mine just got back from Japan. He's a record producer, Bill Reed by name, who has also published two books: "Hot From Harlem," a history of black entertainment that profiles key figures, and "Early Plastic," a memoir of growing up in West Virginia and coming to New York, where he landed in Greenwich Village and became a bookseller, jazz aficionado, literateur and cinéaste.

In the prologue to "Early Plastic," Reed tells an anecdote about the title that underscores his turn of mind:

Nearly three decades ago an urban morality fable appeared in The New York Times about a woman awaiting her turn on free appraisal day at Sotheby's. Ahead of her stood dozens of others also queued up and clutching the requisite mooseheads, kitschy paintings and antique snuff cans, etc. from grandma's attic. Unlike most of the others' would-be treasures, however, hers was a small one in the form of an unassuming piece of jewelry.

Upon reaching the front of the line -- which stretched out the door and part of the way down New York's Fifth Avenue -- she proffered the item to the auction house official seated at the table. He examined it for a second or two, then gasped, "But madame, this is plastic." Without missing so much as a beat (and as if any further proof were needed that hope does indeed spring eternal in the human breast) the undaunted woman immediately, ingenuously, and hopefully replied: "Early plastic?"

Anyway, Reed went to Japan mostly on business and sold a lot of masters, including the Japanese re-issue of jazz singer Pinky Winters' "Rain Sometimes" with a four-record contract.

"Pinky is so well known in Japan that her name opened doors for me everywhere," says Reed, who has known and recorded the 77-year-old Winters for many years. She's my calling card." The cognoscenti know her as a singer's singer.

One door Winters' name opened was that of a 58-year-old Tokyo physician, whose Web site Reed had come across two years ago. "Check out some of the stuff at the site," he says. "It has not just the most valuable collection of jazz LPs I have ever seen, but also vintage hi-fi equipment, lallique, Tiffany lamps, cacti, sports cars, cat fish, ceremonial tea sets (!), etc."

Before he left for Japan Reed decided he wanted to meet the physician. So he sent an email and dropped Pinky Winters' name: "I am her producer." "Dr. Takeshi Mikami wrote back immediately: 'Pinky Winters is my favorite singer,'" Reed says. "Soooo hip."

There could have been a hitch. You know how weird collectors can be. Would someone like Quasimodo come to the door with drool coming out of his mouth over a battery-operated record player and two old Perry Como records? Could his email correspondent have been a fabricated cyber identity?

On the contrary, Dr. Mikami turned out to be eminently sane, "a dear, sweet, gentleman with five children, all of whom are also doctors," Reed says. The good doctor invited him to be his guest for an afternoon. "It was a truly mind-blowing experience. I even got a chance to listen to 'Rain Sometimes' on Dr. Mikami's high HIGH end speaker system in one of several listening rooms above his clinic."

Also mind-blowing, Reed says, is Japan's top 10 list: "It's remarkably stylistically diverse. A vocal version of the Jupiter movement from Holst's 'The Planets' was recently the No. 1 song. That's one result of ongoing musical literacy in that country. They still have music classes at every grade level and nearly everyone there can navigate at least one instrument. Which brings to mind what the great jazz drummer Max Roach recently (slyly and diplomatically) remarked re: rap: 'People who voted for defunding of music education programs in public schools are getting what they paid for.'"

Guess who the critic is talking about:

1) Frank Sinatra
2) Bing Crosby
3) Mel Tormé
4) Tony Bennett

The man practices artless art. He takes verbal liberties, even makes occasional mistakes. Since he doesn't seem to notice or care, no one else can. He chats between songs. He invites the audience to ignore the command in the programme that applause be withheld until the end of each group. He basks in relaxed glory, and cultivates the illusion of spontaneity. When he tells stories, he demonstrates a vast dynamic range and crisp diction in a variety of accents. He colours the text boldly or subtly, as needed. He shares interpretive secrets. In the process, he turns Carnegie Hall, capacity 2,804, into a cozy parlour.

5) None of the above.

Go here for the answer.

Here we go again. Watch this morning's hearings live on the Web as the 9/11 commission takes more sworn testimony in public.

There are only two weeks left to tell the world what you want to do before you die. So say a pair of editors preparing a book of last wishes to be published (they say) early next year by Little, Brown & Company. I haven't checked with Little, Brown. The editors, Mike and Chris, have a Website, 2dobeforeidie.com, where they're inviting submissions and where you can read stories that have already come in.

I have no idea who they are, but I don't think Chris and Mike are end-of-the-worlders or anyone like that. "The aim of the book," they messaged, "is to spark thoughts, conversation and action about what's important and what's possible, encouraging people to consider what would really be on their list of things to do before they die." They're also looking for "true stories" and want "as many people as possible to send something in to the site about something they've already done that's memorable or satisfying as they look back on their life so far."

The due date for all story submissions for the book is April 30. "Unfortunately," they say, "as this is just one notch above a labor of love, we're currently unable to pay for any stories received." That part of the project troubles me. If it's one notch above a labor of love, shouldn't they pay one notch above no-pay? Does the proviso "currently" mean they will pay in the future? Besides, Little, Brown & Company (which is owned by Time Warner Inc.) was a labor of profit the last time I looked.

They've even noticed the controversy in India. Until the other day if you typed the word "Jew" into Google, the first search result turned out to be a link to an anti-Semitic Web site. A group called removejewwatch wants the site removed from the Google search engine and is asking at least 50,000 people to sign a petition demanding that.

Google has taken note as well. Now if you type in "Jew," you get a Google explanation called Offensive Search Results. It says the Google Team is also "disturbed" by the result, and it apologizes for "the upsetting nature of the experience you had" if you had done the search.

But it also says the automated system for ranking sites, which determines the order of the listings, is "completely objective." Further, it points out, "the only sites we omit are those we are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to manipulate our result." And in any case, it says, Google "cannot be influenced" by petitions. So the anti-Semitic Web site remains a top search result.

If you type in "Christian" the top site you get is for the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, immediately followed by a pro-Christian Web site. If you type in "Muslim" the top site listed is a pro-Muslim site under construction that is partnered with a religious Muslim educational site.

Question: Is the issue a matter of free speech vs. hate speech, as one petitioner says? Seems to me Google has done the correct thing. If anyone can make the case in court to remove the offensive anti-Semitic site from the search engine, that would be the way to go. Google already says it's willing to comply. Barring that, free speech should rule. What do you think?

Tom Shales had the best commentary and roundup I've read of yesterday's sad little press gathering in the East Room of the White House, where our Fearless Maximum Leader was seen on television doing his usual, stumbling tap dance. Shales began:

"When I say something, I mean it," George W. Bush said decisively near the end of last night's prime-time presidential news conference. Nobody called out, "When will you say something?" -- the White House press corps is too mannerly for that -- but some reporters, and some viewers, must have been thinking it.

That was our snap judgment: the guy is simply out of his league.

Whatever else there is to say, the guy is simply out of his league. He wasn't elected to the presidency in the first place. He didn't deserve it in the second place. He's proved himself incompetent in the third place. "I don't plan on losing my job," he said tonight, during his news conference (only the third in prime time since he took office). "I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror." He's still planning on telling us the plan? We're still waiting. As to his job, we've got news for him: He's headed for the unemployment line. He can join the crowd.

Postscript: A bemused reader, who calls himself Wagner Redux, writes: "Don't be so certain. This little fucker will be content with nothing less than Gotterdammerung -- or however the hell the Fritzies spell it -- with music provided by selected cuts from The King Sisters."

Here we go. Watch this morning's hearings live on the Web as the 9/11 commission takes more sworn testimony in public.

Did anybody see Chalmers Johnson Sunday night on C-Span2 Book TV? It was a rerun of an interview done in March at the Los Angeles Public Library by Warren Olney (of L.A. radio station KCRW), and it was mesmerizing. All Olney had to do was listen.

Johnson recently published "The Sorrows of Empire."  His thesis in the book, as it was on C-Span, is that 1) the United States is a modern empire,"thriving on fear and military domination" as ancient Rome once did, 2) the U.S. empire has already crossed the Rubicon on the way to oblivion, and 3) our Maximum Leader is speeding us on our way.

As C-Span summarized it, Johnson "argues that the ultimate purpose of U.S. military bases is not to maintain stability or promote democracy, but to defend U.S. hegemony. He traces U.S. world domination from the Cold War to today, then claims American militarism is irreversibly damaging its Constitution and the trust of its people." This continues an argument he began in "Blowback," another of his books.

Although Johnson taught history for decades at U.C. Berkeley, beginning in 1962, he opposed the '60s counterculture. What makes him doubly credible as a witness for the prosecution is that he was also a CIA consultant in those years. So he can't be accused of being a leftwing maniac. He's not only a brilliant historian, he's what's called "a biting writer."

Johnson certainly had bite on C-Span. It reminded me -- as have the hearings of the 9/11 commission -- that Gore Vidal's critics, especially Ron Rosenbaum, owe Vidal an apology for calling him a paranoid nut last year when he called our Maximum Leader and his cronies "the Bush junta."

Postscript: George Mattingly writes: "Jan, no, didn't catch Chalmers Johnson on CSPAN2 Sunday night. (Confession: I was out at the San Francisco Jazzfest catching Toots Thieleman, Kenny Werner, Airto, and Oscar Castro-Neves. Werner was so mesmerizing on piano that Toots proposed to him -- at how old? 185? -- saying "Kenny I am in love with you and this is the city for men to marry is it not?" A crackup -- and a great concert. ) I'm off to get a copy of SORROWS OF EMPIRE -- thanks for that tip: Just what I'm looking for (and absolutely right to give the nod to Gore Vidal, the most under-rated voice going). While I confess I'm an under-payer (as in zero), your column is one I WOULD pay for."

Thanks, George. I'm glad somebody besides my mother takes me seriously. To be truthful, even she had doubts.

Blogging as self-promotion: A book review of mine appeared Sunday in the Chicago Sun-Times:

It's hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk's latest novel, his first in a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. "A Hole in Texas" offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes: a red-faced opportunist who heads the House Armed Services Committee and a mustachioed investigative reporter for the Washington Post. Both are melodramatic, even comical cliches to serve the plot. But what a plot!

Wouk tells the tale of a colossal scientific project in particle physics, the Texas-based Superconducting Super Collider, done in by self-interested politicians who invariably mislead a clueless public with the help of weaselly journalists; meantime, news of a secret Chinese experiment that has found an elusive subatomic particle, the Higgs boson, touches off a national panic about an apocalyptic Boson Bomb.

The 88-year-old author, remarkable for his creativity in old age, has a canny knack for the topical and for touching all the bases. Though conventional wisdom colors the texture of the novel, it speeds the chapters along like, well, a superconductor. You can easily finish "A Hole in Texas" between the takeoff and landing of a transcontinental flight, and without skimming.

Read the rest here. One reader already has. He writes: "My recent airplane reads have been Dan Brown novels. It's amazing how he writes the same basic book again and again and still gets paid. I wanna do a similiar 'find and replace' style of writing and make my millions as well."

Most excellently well put. The breathless, deathless prose of "The Da Vinci Code" reads to me like an Ivy League boy's adventure. Wouk isn't much of a prose stylist either. Next to Brown, however, he's another Dr. Johnson.

Postscript: Ryan McGee writes: "I always like reviews that have energy. Mine sometimes replace 'energy' with 'drunken stupor,' like when I tackled the high culture of 'The Nick and Jessica variety hour.'"

A friend asked (this is true): "How's the blogging life?" My reply: "Underpaid and overrated." The overraters tend to be johnnys-come-lately who believe they've had a revelation when, in fact, all they've done is plugged in. The underpayers are everyone else -- in other words, the readers. The truth is that, like much else on the Web, blogs would dry up if readers had to pay for them.

They might dry up anyway. Blogs are said to be proliferating and their influence spreading. Yeah, like stardust. I've noticed lately that even at no charge some of the best blogs have already gone silent. For instance, the literary MobyLives went into hibernation many months ago. Earlier this year, on Jan. 5, readers were told that "Moby is almost done resting." It's still not back.

One of the savviest and earliest of the personal culture commentators was Marc Weisblott. His Weisblogg always seemed to me ahead of the curve in style and subject. Then he quit. Why? "I gave up the blog with grander heights in mind," he says, "specifically a project where the blog will be sponsored and have a print mag affiliation -- and, of course, those have been slow to reveal themselves ... a meeting a month ago and then ... well, waiting."

My question prompted him to bring back his URL, I'm glad to report. Weisblott says he's "dipping back into the action, but meanwhile reconstituting some of [his] past efforts." So go look. Here's an innaresting rumination, chosen at random, on the "friendship recession" noticed by The Wall Street Journal in 2002.

Postscript: From a reader: "Golly, a man in a snit -- and Goddamit!, well done & good for you and whatever slim justice there is in these mean times! But I feel exempt from the general firestorm, as you're the only blogger I read.  Still, a little inconsistency in the argument -- Paul Krugman is nothing more than a paid blogger, as was Edmund Wilson, or Malcolm Cowley, or Mencken and other assorted smarties. You guys do the work for us dummies. I mean, I didn't have to be a whale to get a fix on 'Moby Dick,' but I do praise Big Herm for the effort in my behalf, and he helped a lot.

"Furthermore, as an advocate of Chaos Theory, these are glad and pleasurable days. The disintegration of the Bush cheap-jack-C.B-DeMille-plaster-board-and-plastic-executive stockade is lousy special effects but wonderful spectacle. May it prevail, although instead of Vic Mature and Hedy Lemarr we have a cast from Todd Browning's 'Freaks.' Strictly Republic Studios, but great entertainment. He Is Risen!"

The reader signs himself "The Baptist John" to distinguish himself no doubt from the Bible guy.

Oliver Stone's "Looking for Fidel," to premiere Wednesday on HBO, is called the follow-up in tough mode to "Commandante," his previous softball portrait of the Cuban leader. This time, instead of tossing bouqets at Castro in a loving (some said fawning) approach to El Commandante, Stone reportedly confronts him about his vicious crackdown on political dissidents and the shocking execution of three Cuban ferry hijackers who were barely out of their teens.

According to the HBO synopsis of "Looking for Fidel," Stone interviewed key players besides Castro, including "prisoners accused of hijacking, leading dissidents, wives of prisoners and human rights advocates. ... In one extraordinary roundtable, Stone brings together Castro, several accused hijackers, prosecutors and defense attorneys ..." That ought to be interesting. Even Cubans who idolized Castro were thunderstruck by the three executions and reportedly felt they were the ultimate, unconscionable betrayal of the Cuban revolution.

The AP's Frazier Moore writes that HBO viewers "were spared 'Comandante' when the network yanked it before its scheduled airdate a year ago." That film "was undone last spring" because of the crackdown and executions. "No less a defect," Frazier adds, "'Comandante'" was a barely coherent vanity production placing the filmmaker at its core while dabbling with the question: Who's that old fellow with the beard beside Oliver Stone?"

Moore says "Looking for Fidel" is "a much more balanced portrait" though "hampered by stylishly fidgety camera work and choppy editing." Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times, who has also seen both films, writes that "Fidel" is "much grimmer" than "Commandante" and is "charged with intensity."

Stone told Mitchell that this time he did his homework. He noted, however, that he did not intend the follow-up "to be a document, like an Amnesty International inquiry into each and every prisoner. But," Stone said, "I did film the dissidents, to hear what they had to say. 'Fidel' is more narrow in focus; I tried to get him angry this time." And was he successful in provoking El Commandante? "Yes," Stone said, "he was defensive." In the first film, the director also concedes: "Perhaps I was pandering, perhaps I was softballing him with the questions, as some people say."

For more background have a look at VERGING ON CUBA, an item from last November about a panel discussion by novelists Russell Banks and William Kennedy, who had recently spent time with Castro; New Yorker writer John Lee Anderson, who lived in Havana for a year; Cuban-American novelist Achy Obejas; Norman Pearlstein, editor-in-chief of Time Inc.; Terry McCoy, editor of "Cuba on the Verge: An Island in Transition," and others with a longtime interest in Cuba.

What struck me then as most revealing was 1) what Banks had to say about the cohering force of Cuba's national mythology, comparing its strength to Israel's and that of the United States, and 2) Obejas's conclusion that, regardless of whether or when Castro goes or who replaces him, the greatest influence on daily life in Cuba will depend on American politics more than its own.

There are plenty of editorials to choose from this morning to describe Condoleezza Rice's testimony at yesterday's 9/11 hearing. (Here's the complete transcript.) We made our snap judgment about the Condi context yesterday while the hearing was still in progress: "She may well be remembered as Condoleezza ("Cover Your Ass") Rice."

Today's New York Times editorial called her "utterly unconvincing when she tried to portray Al Qaeda as anything approaching a top concern for the White House." The Washington Post editorial also says she was "unconvincing," notes that she "didn't add much to the administration's previous explanations," remarks that she was "both contradictory and implausible" and deplores the fact that Rice could not accept the idea that "mistakes were made and more could have been done. It's a shame that President Bush and his top national security aide haven't offered that honest accounting."

In his quick piece yesterday, political analyst Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek: "Stylistically and tactically she was serviceable." He too pointed out Rice's unwillingness to take responsibility: "Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job."

As to our Maximum Leader's whereabouts on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Fineman writes:

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated. That won him enormous sympathy and patience from the voters. But what if he was literally on vacation—at the ranch in Crawford—when he should have been making sure that someone was ringing alarm bells throughout the bureaucracy?

Which brings us to this morning's Times column by Bob Herbert, who comments on the fearless Leader's whereabouts yesterday: "The president called Ms. Rice from his pickup truck on the ranch to tell her she had done a great job before the panel. It doesn't get more surreal than that. Mr. President, there's a war on. You might consider hopping a plane to Washington."

How about we retire him to his ranch permanently, where he can ride around in his pickup truck to his heart's content?

Postscript: Wading in the Velvet Sea blogger Ryan McGee says he put on his "investigative hat (the one without the beer straws in it) and waded through the actual testimony transcripts." His exclusive analysis deconstructs Condi's pop-cult context.

John Powers writes in L.A. Weekly: "Air America has a long way to go." Too true. "Most of the left listened to the shows with dawning, er, yawning horror," he says. (Remember this? < FONT color=#003399>"Hate to say it, but what a bore"?) Powers figures the audience is willing to cut the network some slack until it develops more 'tude. I'm not so sure.

Finally. The 9/11 Commission's Jamie Gorelick, Tim Roemer and Bob Kerrey sharpened the drama. By confronting Condoleezza ("CYA") Rice with questions she preferred to filibuster, they woke everyone up. Their directness, and Richard Ben-Veniste's earlier questioning about a classified memo of Aug. 6, 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," were the real "take away" from this morning's hearing, not Rice's defensive replies. We'll hear all the pro forma statements about what a wonderful witness she made for the administration. Don't believe 'em.

Pass the No-Doze. Two hours into Condoleezza Rice's 9/11 hearing testimony is anybody still awake? A typical Condi sound-bite: "We were looking in the context  of the plan that gave a better regional context ..." Zzzzzzz.

To "the sleaze factor" and (thanks to columnist Nicholas von Hoffman's apt coinage) "the swine factor" in describing the W Ltd. gang, let's add (thanks to the National Security Adviser) "the snooze factor."  That's the Condi context. At any rate, she may well be remembered as Condoleezza ("Cover Your Ass") Rice. 

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please. Let the hearing begin. Watch it live on C-Span2 on the Web. Fibbing not allowed. And Dr. Rice, please uncross all your fingers and toes.

Courtesy of my man in Havana, the latest issue of CubaNow (a digital magazine of Cuban arts and culture) just eluded U.S. customs and made it into my emailbox. It features stacks of current and archived articles like these, picked at random: Gabriel Garcia Marquez on "bad literature teachers"; Cuba's most eminent musicologist, Maria Teresa Linares, on "the close relationship and mutual influence of Cuban and American music, from early symphonic orchestras to present day rap groups"; Herbie Hancock Jammin' in Havana; Danzon, the Cuban dance fit for a queen. Many articles are translated -- somewhat awkwardly -- from the Spanish. Others seem to have been written directly in awkward English. Not all the articles are from Cuba. Chomsky highlights flaws in Bush Doctrine, for example, is reprinted from the Yale Daily News. But the magazine as a whole communicates an unfiltered Cuban point of view, which, whether you agree with it or not, makes innaresting reading.

Early in "Hannah and Martin," a new play about the 20th-century political theorist Hannah Arendt and the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the audience at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre learns it's just a few handshakes away from Hitler.

"Hitler has blood on his hands, yes?" says Hannah in a flashback to a Nuremberg hotel room in 1946. "He shook hands with Himmler. Who shook hands with the minister of education. Who shook hands with Professor Martin Heidegger. Who shooks hands with me."

That makes four degrees of separation. If you continue to count, Kate Fodor, who wrote the play, makes five; and being in the audience watching it makes six. At any rate, as Hannah puts it later in the play, her dilemma is this: "If the hand you take is one stretched out for help, what then? A sin to take it? Or a sin to refuse?"

The handshakes are symbolic, of course, even if they were literal. A lot more than polite greetings are at stake. Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933 (the year Hitler came to power and Arendt, who was Jewish, fled Germany to the United States). He was appointed rector of the University of Freiburg and regarded Hitler as Germany's savior. Whatever doubts Heidegger may have had then and later -- he resigned as rector in 1934 because of faculty and party disagreements -- he never publicly apologized for his association with the Nazis.

This is the historical template for Fodor's play, which is based on well-known facts and on lesser-known evidence discovered in Arendt's letters (unsealed in 1995) that she did more than shake Heidegger's hand. As his student in the 1920s, overawed by his intellect, she briefly became his lover. And the affair continued long after, by mail.

The play's seduction scene is credible, the imagined bedding plausible (even allowing for the apple she brings him). David Strathairn, as the man who shook the hand who shook the hand, cuts a more conceivable figure as a Casanova in the bedroom than he does as a scholar in the classroom. And I have no quarrel with Melissa Friedman's portrait of the nervous, nervy, chain-smoking grad student in thrall to the professor ("He taught me how to think!")

But if Straithairn is Martin Heidegger, I'm Martin Buber. Not to lay everything on a fine actor who's simply miscast, but ... if you don't believe Straithairn is Heidegger, then it's pretty hard to believe in the rest of the play or the production.

Hannah's dilemma presents itself after the war. As a writer for The New Yorker, she has come to Nuremberg to cover the war crimes trial of Hitler Youth leader Baldur Von Schirach. While in Germany, she feels obliged to see Heidegger who, at her urging and that of others, has been stripped of his professorship and deprived of the right to teach.

When she and Heidegger confront each other, he tells her: "I never advocated violence! Not physical violence. Perhaps an intellectual violence." He rhapsodizes: "Do you know what Hitler said that first caught my attention? He said that all great ages seek bridges to the heroic past. How could I have resisted that? I wanted to set a clarifying fire that would burn away the weak and corrupted and the inconsequential thinking with which history is littered."

Hannah demurs: "It was so clear what Hitler was from the beginning. I think any second-year graduate student would have slammed the door in his face if Heidegger hadn't been standing there next to him."

The great thinker still won't give up on Hitler. "He was very close, Hannah," Martin says. "He got it wrong, but he was very close."

The two of them go on like that until Hannah finally says: "You are a sort of murderer, I think." To which, stiff-necked as ever (but now wounded), Martin replies: "I am a scholar!"

Which must have done the trick. Because Hannah has a change of heart and decides to write a letter asking the authorities to restore Heidegger to the faculty so he may continue to teach. Despite much to-ing and fro-ing about the letter with her conscience-stricken assistant, who refuses to type it for her, Hannah finally manages to get the thing down on paper. And so Hannah's dilemma is settled, if not solved, at least to the extent that she has acted upon her conviction: Hell, Martin made a colossal mistake, but students shouldn't be made to suffer for it by depriving them of his lectures.

Let's not blame the messenger for the message, however. Arendt did in fact come to Heidegger's defense. Fodor's fictionalized dramatization doesn't do justice to the subject not because it delivers the wrong message but because the message hasn't been fleshed out. Martin and Hannah are daytime tube-worthy mouthpieces portentously debating issues well beyond their capacities, notwithstanding Friedman's vivid efforts to invest Hannah with human, if Katharine Hepburn-like, qualities.

While the issues overshadow the two chief debaters, it is the supporting characters and players, ironically, who lend "Hannah and Martin" a tangible sense of reality: George Morfogen especially (as the kindly, principled Karl Jaspers), Laura Hicks (as Heidegger's Nazified wife, the chilling, loyal martinet Elfride) and Sandra Shipley (as Gertrude Jaspers, the wife with touching common sense).

"Hannah and Martin," a presentation of the Epic Theatre Center, runs through April 15 at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, 55 Mercer St. (in Soho), Manhattan, N.Y. Tickets may be purchased online via Ticket Central.

Selected evenings feature post-performance discussions. Thursday's panel of experts: Joanna Scott, author of "Hannah Arendt Discovers America," David Kettler, scholar in residence at Bard College and author of "Political Theory and the Hitler Regime", and Alan Rosenberg, professor of philosophy at Queens College and author of "Heidegger and the Holocaust." 

Hats off to the five-member jury that awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama to Doug Wright's "I Am My Own Wife." Smart choice. It doesn't always happen. But easy choice, too.

When "Wife" opened last December on Broadway, it bowled me over: "Once in a blue moon a play comes along that restores my belief in the vitality of the theater," I wrote. "Wife" bowled everyone over. The raves were unanimous. For the actor, too. Jefferson Mays is, after all, the sine qua non of this one-man piece. "Mays gives a virtuoso performance the likes of which comes along once in many blue moons," my review went on. "It is a spectacular achievement, but to describe it that way is to give a misleading impression.

Playing "multiple roles, chief among them a singular Berliner whose transvestitism is only one aspect of her unique identity ... Mays illuminates his impersonations with subtlety, not fireworks. He re-creates Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who was a real-life figure, with a controlled, riveting intensity. His fusion of intelligence, feelings, irony and humor radiates heat and light, but purposely kept at room temperature. This allows Charlotte's bizarre survival story from the Nazi and Communist eras to unfold as part of daily experience rather than as blinding revelation."

The Pulitzer jurors were Ben Brantley, chief drama critic of The New York Times, who chaired the panel; Robert Brustein, theater critic of The New Republic and former artistic director of American Repertory Theater in Boston; Karen D'Sousa, drama critic of the San Jose Mercury News; Michael Phillips, drama critic of the Chicago Tribune; and Linda Winer, drama critic of Newsday.

In June we'll find out how smart the Tony Awards committee is. You'd think that "Wife" is a shoe-in for best play and Mays would win, hands down, for best actor. With the Tonys, however, even when the smart choice is the easy choice, you never know.

Hate to say it, but what a bore. If you listened to Air America Radio over the weekend, did you come to the conclusion -- as I did -- that high-decibel liberal talk radio is as monotonous as conservative talk radio, and nearly as off-putting? What a shame.

The sole redeeming factor working against the rant factor is that along with the liberal viewpoint Air America Radio does have a sense of humor, i.e. the Top 6 Reasons to register on its website:

1. John Ashcroft will know where to find you.
2. All our annoying pop-up ads are invisible.
3. Because they shut down the Dennis Kucinich dating chat room.
4. Our spam is vegetarian.
5. You like making up passwords.
6. You were banned from the Fox News website for having your own opinion.

Maybe it's just a coincidence. But after reading Norman Lebrecht's recent column, A critical gap, I can't help thinking that he must have read William Osborne's "Marketplace of Ideas" on ArtsJournal.

The focus of each article is different. Lebrecht zeroes in on arts criticism, Osborne on arts funding. Nevertheless, Lebrecht cites American corporatization of the arts as one reason for "the pontifical tone" of U.S. criticism and counts the number of arts insitutions in London and New York to contrast them, much as Osborne cited American privatization of the arts and counted institutions in Germany cities to contrast the U.S. and Europe.

Lebrecht writes:

Every serious British newspaper carries two, three or more pages of arts commentary and criticism which report, reflect and review a razzle of activity in a style which may be ponderous, or provocative, or purely piss-taking.

No American newspaper dares venture past the first of these ps. ...

An era of incorporation fostered a pontifical tone in American arts criticism.

Over the same era, America suffered the incorporation of many arts institutions. London has five international orchestras, three year-round opera companies, two ballet troupes, three international art galleries, two great engines of modern art at Tate and Saatchi, a National Theatre and too many smaller companies to count. New York has one monolith in each art form, two at most.

Osborne wrote:

Germany's public arts funding [as opposed to U.S. private funding] allows the country to have 23 times more full-time symphony orchestras per capita than the United States, and approximately 28 times more full-time opera houses. ...

Germany has about 80 year-round opera houses, while the U.S., with more than three times the population, does not have any. Even the Met only has a seven-month season. These numbers mean that larger German cities often have several orchestras. Munich has seven full-time, year-round professional orchestras, two full-time, year-round opera houses (one with a large resident ballet troupe,) as well as two full-time, large, spoken-word theaters for a population of only 1.2 million. Berlin has three full-time, year-round opera houses ...

More power to Lebrecht. He quoted ArtsJournal's Sam Bergman by name, as Drew McManus notes in "Adapistration." May Lebrecht have as great an influence on others as Osborne's on him.

Not incidentally, McManus also writes:

Is there investigative cultural journalism in America? If so, it's slipped passed me. More importantly, I think we should ask WHY we don't have any investigative cultural journalism in this country.

Hey, Drew: Get familiar with Osborne's investigative work. Have a look at his "Art is Just An Excuse," published back in 1996 in the Pennsylvania-based IAWM Journal (a publication of the International Alliance for Women in Music), or his "You Sound Like a Ladies' Orchestra," which won a Best of the Web Award in 1997. Those articles are international in scope, but they cover much that should be of interest to American audiences and critics.

We all know the Maximum Leader and his Crony in Chief will sing a private duet for the 9/11 commission. But in case we forgot, Hendrik Hertzberg reminds us in today's New Yorker of two unpublicized conditions set by the White House: "There will be no official electronic recording" of their testimony "and there will be no transcript." Question: Do you suppose that's because the White House believes in transparency, open government and telling the truth, or because the pair might sing off-key? Answer: Eleanor Clift's terrific piece in Newsweek about "the Wizard of Oz" letter, which "strips away the myth that Bush is in charge."

"For all you liberals out there," as my cousin Joan says, "if you can't get Air America Radio on the radio, you can get it on the computer. (Just click the link to stream the broadcast.)

Makes sense, especially for all those liberals and conservatives who don't live in the six major metropolitan areas that can tune in to Air America Radio -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and the Inland Empire, Calif.

(Believe it or not, that's what they call the inland bedroom communities in part of southern California: the Inland Empire. It sounds like a developer's fantasy. I guess it's no more pretentious than calling the rural reaches of northern Vermont the Northeast Kingdom, a nickname that stuck because George D. Aiken, a U.S. Senator from Vermont for 33 years, dreamed it up.)

Slate's rave notice for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" makes me cringe with disbelief. "This is the best movie I've seen in a decade," David Edelstein wrote, and he had lots of company from critics across the spectrum. There's no accounting for taste and all that. But it reminds me of a recent conversation I had while standing on line in the men's room waiting for a urinal, having just seen a special theatrical screening of "Ripley's Game" (with John Malkovich as Ripley).

Guy on line asks me, "Like it?"
"Loved it."
Guy next to me says, "I didn't like it at all."
"Why not?"
"Badly directed. No suspense. I didn't care about the characters."
"That's three strikes. What films have you liked?"
It takes him a while. "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg."
"That's 40 years ago. Nothing more recent?"
Guy stares at me. He's still thinking when it's my turn at the urinal. End of conversation.

In the scheme of things, neither Edelstein's rave in Slate nor my conversation in the men's room means much. ("Ripley's Game" hasn't even had a commercial release.) But the critical hype for "Spotless Mind" has led to some peculiar conclusions, like the one that sums up a lengthy disquisition on the science of memory erasure, which is the key to that flick:

While the culture frets over the perils of high-tech erasure, we should really be worrying about the opposite: what will happen when we remember too much.

Until I read that, I hadn't realize the culture was fretting about such perils. I thought it was fretting about the perils of Iraq, the economy, gay marriage, bared breasts, corporate corruption and the W Ltd. gang. I guess I'll have to add high-tech memory erasure to the list. If you want to know the truth, I thought my problem was plain, low-tech forgetting. Like what did I do with my glasses? Oh, there they are, on the bridge of my nose.

It was so funny it seemed too good to believe. I'm talking about a new routine called "George W. Bush Invigorates America's Youth," which made its debut with an hilarious video clip Monday night on "The Late Show With David Letterman." I laughed so hard it broke me up. I wish I could find the clip on the Web to show you. But I can't.

Lisa de Morae's report in yesterday's Washington Post pretty well describes what I saw. (Enlarge the photo.) Among the people standing behind our Maximum Leader during a recent speech he gave in Florida was a chubby "boy of about 12 in a red baseball cap, rugby shirt and chino shorts who is caught on camera yawning uncontrollably, twisting his head from side to side, checking his watch and otherwise looking pretty thoroughly bored, while the other people serving as background ignored him."

"The Late Show" website recounts the video clip in similarly precise detail, though it differed on the boy's age: "Directly behind the President stood a boy of 14 or so bored to tears. While the President spoke, the lad yawned, stretched, yawned some more, checked his watch, took a knee, yawned, and fell asleep standing up near the end. It was a very humorous actual clip we uncovered."

Well, CNN thought so too. The next day, Tuesday, it showed the video clip -- twice -- but then said -- twice -- that it had received a call from the White House claiming the clip was doctored. The clip was such a candid commentary on our Maximum Leader, and so funny, that when I saw it on Monday night I'd wondered myself whether it was doctored.

But, in point of fact, it was the real thing. What's more, CNN now denies it received that call from the White House. And "The Late Show" website notes emphatically, "The boy was at the rally and the boy was standing behind the President." It also asks a reasonable question: "Why would CNN say the White House HAD called if the White House never did?" The site also claims that a reliable Letterman source says "the White House DID call CNN."

Finally, it suggests that "while Condoleeza Rice is testifying in front of the 9/11 Commission, perhaps she can shed some light on this as well. Perhaps the White House truly believes the kid wasn't there due to faulty intelligence." It's good to see Letterman playing in the same league as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Three news stories this morning lend more ammunition to the powder keg we hope will explode what's left of W Ltd.'s credibility.

One is the top front-page story in The New York Times, headlined in the print edition: "BUSH AIDES KEPT CLINTON'S PAPERS FROM 9/11 PANEL." The subheads summarize the rest of the story: "AN EXPLANATION IS SOUGHT" and "Aides to Ex-President Say Documents Could Help Commission's Work." (Go read. You may notice the website's headline doesn't do the article justice.)

Another, headlined "2 Decline To Testify On Drug Cost," is buried deep within the paper. It reports that the White House, citing executive privilege, has "refused to send Doug Badger, special assistant to the president for health policy, to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee."

The refusal naturally irked the Democrats on the committee. One of them called Badger "the Condoleezza Rice for health care." An excellent metaphor, doncha think?

The article also reports that the former Medicare administrator, Thomas A. Scully, who threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, if he shared his prescription-cost estimates with Congress last year, has written the committee a letter "saying he had been busy traveling and would be 'unable to appear.'"

As every sentient citizen should know by now: "Mr. Foster's figures are important because he calculated that the cost of the prescription drug bill would exceed by about a third the $400 billion that Congress was assuming in preparing the legislation for passage. Had his calculations been widely known at the time, it is possible the measure would have failed, or at least been significantly altered."

The third article begins: "A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Bush administration must release thousands of pages of documents related to a White House task force that met behind closed doors to develop a national energy policy.

"The ruling," it continued, "was a victory for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental lobbying group, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group. The two organizations have been trying to find out whether the task force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was heavily influenced by energy executives and lobbyists."

How many more strikes do we need to dump these guys?

Viewers of tonight's "Frontline" documentary about the 1994 Rwanda genocide will be reminded of "the world's failure to halt the slaughter." That's what I wrote earlier today. How stupid for being so vague. I owe readers an apology.

I should have said viewers will be reminded of "the failure of the United Nations." I should have said they will be reminded of "the failure of the United States." Because that's who failed, not some entity called "the world," which lets everybody off the hook.

And now I wonder whether the exhibition of Rwanda Project photos currently in the U.N. lobby, rather than paying tribute to the Rwanda orphans who took them, is actually an insult. The U.N. doesn't deserve the right to show those photos.

Tonight's "Frontline" PBS documentary about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, "Ghosts of Rwanda," will remind viewers of the world's failure to halt the slaughter of a civilian population which "occurred at a rate of three to four times that of the Holocaust." It put to flight "two million internally displaced persons and two million refugees," according to The Rwanda Project.

Numbers alone cannot not tell the story. To quantify the enormous toll of the genocide in which the majority Hutu tribe butchered the minority Tutsi tribe by the hundreds of thousands is merely to circumscribe the meaning of what happened. But it is worth noting that more than 800,000 people were killed, nearly 80 percent of Rwanda's children "lost at least one family member" and more than 60 percent of the children interviewed by UNICEF in the aftermath of the genocide "said they did not care whether they grew up."

The Rwanda Project notes -- as will be evident tonight on "Ghosts" -- that "images continue to play a key part in our memory of the injustices" and have "served as a major strategy for documenting" the atrocities. But photography has also been used as "a way to reunite children with their families" by putting "the power of the camera" into the hands of those affected most.

The project's "Through the Eyes of Children" does just that. Coinciding with tonight's "Frontline" report, photos from the project are on display in a special exhibit at the United Nations to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide. April 7 has been designated by the U.N. General Assembly an International Day of Reflection.

I've touted "Through the Eyes of Children" many times before as a stunning nexus of art, politics, guilt and trauma, with an emphasis on innocence, beauty, justice and redemption. It is "the culmination of four years of photographic workshops for the children living at the Imbabazi Orphanage in Gisenyi, Rwanda." Many of them, both Hutu and Tutsi, were injured and orphaned by the 1994 genocide.

The Imbabazi Orphanage in Gisenyi is on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and was once the main crossing for both the exodus and re-entry of Rwandans during and after the genocide. David Jiranek, an amateur photographer who recently died, came upon the orphanage in his travels and in 2000 started a photographic workshop there. He was inspired by the children's perspective and experience. Jiranek gave them disposable cameras, and they began photographing themselves and their community.

The pictures were developed locally at first, displayed on the orphanage walls and put into photo albums by the children. A year later, the children were invited by the U.S. Embassy to exhibit and sell their work in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, with all proceeds going towards their education. A photograph by 8-year-old Jacqueline, entitled "Gadi," won "First Prize -- Portraiture" in the 2001 Camera Arts Magazine Photo Contest (in the adult category) and Honorable Mention in an international competition featuring professional and non-professional photographers.

The children's work is to continue traveling around the U.S. and abroad. The U.N. special exhibition will run through April 15, with a private reception and commemoration on April 7. The reception, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., is by invitation only. Those interested in attending the reception should contact The Rwanda Project via e-mail at info@rwandaproject.org by Sunday, April 4.

The exhibition -- sponsored, curated and produced by "Through the Eyes of Children" and PixelPress -- is open to the public daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the lobby of the United Nations, at East 46th Street and First Avenue in New York.