Straight Up |: November 2006 Archives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Postscript: A reader from Los Angeles writes:

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

In case you've been wondering all this time:

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

Postscript: "Good gracious me."

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

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

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

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

Postscript: He hath reappeared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And don't forget to read this.

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

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

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

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

Idiot quiz for the day: True or false?

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

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

Check your score.

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

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

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

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

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

Seen at 72nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now here's another picture:

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

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

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

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

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

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