Cho Cho Cho

Comedienne Margaret Cho is a national treasure. But I confess that it took me a while to warm to her weblog, which largely consists of very weird, very funny stream-of-consciousness rants. It can be tiring to read because it's just so wacky.

Much of what she has to say is political ...

The famous ghosts who haunt the White House gather to gossip about him in the Red Room night after night. Mary Todd Lincoln keeps opening up the windows and doors in hopes that Dubya will just fall out, which actually scares me because then Dick Cheney would be in charge and what would you rather have, Dumb or Evil? I guess I would go with Dumb, but you know, it is just a revisit to that old question, ''Is the Presidential Office half full or half empty?'' Dolly Madison wails high pitched screams in the dark corridors to upset his slumber, but of course Dubya doesn't notice. He just snores, sawing logs all night because you know he is so stupid he probably has sleep apnea and breathes through his mouth. JFK walks the ceilings, pacing back and forth, wondering whether the nation will ever be returned to itself.

... or geeky ...

I think that the good wizard needs to condition his hair more because it tends to frizz and get split ends and the bad wizard, even though he is clearly evil, has healthier hair, which at times he even over-conditions, because it is too fine and gets very flat. I want to tell him not to use shampoo AND conditioner, but rather a shampoo with conditioner in it, like a Pantene or something. Sometimes you just need to let go of the notion that you absolutely have to have a creme rinse to feel like you have completed your toilette.

Gandalf, the good wizard, my husband pointed out, has a lot of heat damage to his locks, after having gone to hell and back in the big sword battle with a fiery dragon, and so I reckoned that it is no one's fault that his hair is so dry. It is just a sad fact of his profession/fate.

... or queer ...

People have said the darndest things. It makes me really confused, yet happy.

Let's see. because I am absolutely adamant to fight for the right for same sex couples to marry, enjoy all the benefits that heterosexual couples have, because the government cannot and should not be able to tell consenting adults how and whom they would love, nor should they penalize them for doing what is natural and in the name of the Lord -- righteous -- because love is love is love is love -- because I am a woman, because I am a feminist, because I am an Asian American, because I question our current administration and their disturbing tactics, their hypocrisy, their lies, their murderous, conniving antics -- I should be fucked by pigs? I think that is such a strange penalty for an opinion that is only fair and just. I don't think that the pigs would like me that way. I haven't ever done a pig, but you just know when the other party just isn't attracted to you. I don't think that a pig or a boar for that matter would be that into me. I have tried flirting, looking a little too long in a pig's eyes, touching the pig's leg when I was talking to it, letting my hair fall over the pig's snout while laughing a sexy, snorty chuckle. Pigs just don't think I am hot.

... just plain weird ...

Michael Jackson was on "60 Minutes" being interviewed by Ed Bradley and the most shocking thing about it was Ed Bradley wears an earring! It is a tasteful and small gold hoop in his left ear, I believe, because they did seem to try to hide it, so you might think that he's sporting an earpiece. Ed surprised me with his funk.

Michael Jackson was shocking only in the fact that he is always shocking. It is becoming boring how shocking he is.

... or all of the above at once ...

Protesters, please be warned. Fans of my work are not the nicest people in the world. If you are into me, you have been through it. And if you don't know what that means, you just don't know me yet. The great fanbase I have built up over many years in the ''business'' come to see me with a lot of anticipation, and have a lot invested in what I might have to say. And they can fucking fight. They will throw down in a fucking split second, and really I don't want to see any of you protesters get hurt. Queens do not play. They will fucking kill you. Lesbians know how to throw a punch that will leave a very large bruise, and aren't opposed to kicking protesting men right in the balls. The underrepresented, unvoiced, ignored part of our population, the great many that make up the Cho Army are something you are unaware of, and pretty much the gang not to fuck with. We are the baddest motherfuckers on the block. I don't want to see you protesters get injured, emotionally or physically. I don't want to see a drag queen make you cry. Which will happen, if you actually do show up with picket signs and all your protester accessories.

... and at last I have seen the light. Her blog is way, way cooler than mine. You shouldn't even be reading this right now; you should be reading all of her archives, instead.

Happy Valentine's Day

Oh, I love my town.

Couples from out of state are answering this city's Valentine's Day invitation to wed in an unprecedented spree of same-sex marriages that has challenged California law and sent conservative groups scrambling for court intervention.

About 300 people lined up Saturday morning outside City Hall to secure marriage licenses -- and then take each other as "spouse for life" in brief vows that have given San Francisco's seat of government the feel of a Las Vegas wedding chapel.

It was the third-straight day that officials issued the licenses to hundreds of gay and lesbian couples. The response has been so overwhelming that nearly 200 city officials, led by newly elected Mayor Gavin Newsom, have volunteered to pitch in, from sheriff's deputies providing security to clerks processing the licenses.

San Francisco Chronicle 14 February 2004

I gather that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, two of the founders of the Daughters of Bilitis were first in line.

I love my town.

Advice

Some years ago, as a little Valentine’s gift to a Dorothy Parker fan whom I’ve never met, I wrote this little doggerel, which to my embarassment is the best poem I've ever written.

When I want to say something witty
To charm a girl who's smart and pretty
I don’t stop and scratch my head.
I quote what Dorothy Parker said.

When the French were still our allies

In opening a long talk offering a calm voice of reason about our current foreign policy insanity, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, tells an amazing story.

40 years ago, almost to the day, an important Presidential emissary was sent abroad by a beleaguered President of the United States. The United States was facing the prospect of nuclear war. These were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Several emissaries went to our principal allies. One of them was a tough-minded former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, whose mission was to brief President De Gaulle and to solicit French support in what could be a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the Soviet Union but the entire NATO Alliance and the Warsaw Pact.

The former Secretary of State briefed the French President and then said to him at the end of the briefing, "I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons." The French President responded by saying, "I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America."

Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary who would go abroad and say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction which threaten the United States? There's food for thought in that question.

Jenny, do you own your number?

From Collision Detection:

On Ebay today, someone is auctioning their mobile number ''867-5309''
...
People believe that they own these things -- so they treat them like property even if they aren't. In the case of mobile numbers, this is likely to lead to some quite interesting culture clashes. What's going to happen when mobile-number auctioning becomes a really big thing? Will Verizon and Cingular and Sprint and all the other carriers suddenly go, ''whoa, hold a second, we should be getting the money for these sales''?

Of course, you know the answer to that question. But the phone companies are likely to want it both ways, at their convenience. Dig it: Cingular is using Tommy TuTone's song Jenny (867-5309) in their advertisements which tout number portability.

Driving in the spikes

Paul Krugman is on a rampage in today's column.

To understand why questions about George Bush's time in the National Guard are legitimate, all you have to do is look at the federal budget published last week. No, not the lies, damned lies and statistics -- the pictures.

By my count, this year's budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming across the Yangtze River.

He keeps up the pace the whole way. Check it out.

Being a target market

There's an advertisement I clipped from the San Francisco Bay Guardian in July of 1993. A few times a year it turns up among my papers and brings that time back for me.

In my life, it had been just six months since I left college to migrate up to the bay area. I was falling passionately in love with the city of San Francisco. I was living the life of close friends and little adventures you live at that age. For the first time, I was discovering irrational optimism, imagining that perhaps I could fill my life with things that I loved.

In the world, “Generation X” was not yet the commonplace term for people around my age; Generation X was still the title of an obscure cult novel by Douglas Coupland about how our generation was so invisible that it didn't have a name. We were not a marketing demographic. We were not known as “slackers.” Finding anything in print — even an ad for clothing — that spoke in the voice of people my age was a small shock, not the cliché it has become.

And so this little story, meant to sell clothes, was a gem: what it was like to be me that day.

The plane jolted backwards.

A stewardess posed center aisle, ready to point out the overwing exits. A voice crackled over the P.A., “... now bound for San Francisco.”

San Francisco? The four of us gaped across the aisle at ourselves. We were on the wrong flight.

It was supposed to be Dallas. A hot, humid, big-hair Dallas wedding, mountains of matched girls in pink chiffon.

Kegs of flat yellow beer. Dudes with trucks. All this just to keep a pact with college friends.

Joey raised his hand at the stewardess — to confess. I yanked it down. The stewardess covered her face with a mask.

“Wait,” I whispered, “this is better. Pick, Dallas or San Francisco. Quick. Is there an issue here?”

“Debbie's wedding, Steven,” David said. “We all swore on your mother's grave.”

Bonnie said, “We were drunk. Admit it, we hate Debbie. This is the best, an adventure. Let Debbie do Dallas without us.”

The stewardess strolled by checking belts and bags. “What if they find out?” Joey said.

“Act bored,” Bonnie said, “and you can get away with murder.”

Another stweardess walked by. We all yawned at once.

“Okay then,” David said, “Clothes. Our luggage is going to Dallas.”

“Shop,” Bonnie said.

“Buy buy buy,” David said.

“It's an American thing,” Joey said.

Bonnie pointed to her address book. “I have this uncle in San Francisco. Major-big house on a park. Extra rooms.”

“Bonus.”

“We are there.”

---

We did it all. The famous stuff, the secret stuff. At dusk on the first night we watched the fog swallow the sun.

But first we found this store called ROLO. They dressed us head to toe, hat to shoes, overcoats to underwear.

When we stepped onto the curb, Bonnie snapped a picture of the funny boy ROLO on the banner above the sidewalk. He smiled down at her.

“We cannot go home,” I said. “No one will recognize us. We are far too cool for Cleveland. We'll be banned.”

“Then let's don't. Go home I mean.” Bonnie said.

Joey said, “Just look at us. People will line up to fall in love with us, just so we'll stay. They will give us houses. Find us jobs.”

Someone stopped and asked David for directions, “We are like totally here.”

“Bathing suits,” I said, “Something for the beach.”

Up the street, past perfect palm trees, around a corner, up two blocks and into a place called Undercover.

Bonnie held some teddy thing up to her chest, “Nasty,” she said. “So nasty. How much?”

David stood in a mirror, “Which is it, too much gut or too little suit?”

---

We had the best time. We danced all night in a black and neon basement, climbed the club steps at dawn, stunned by the sun.

Drank espresso on a cable car while the real tourists still slept. Bonnie lost her new ROLO hat and cried. “Don't cry,” I said, “we'll go back.”

“No,” she said, “no, let's just stay. We can you know.”

I wrapped her in my new coat and we rang down the highest hill toward the bay.

Joey shined his new shoes with his new sleeve. David found Bonnie's hat in his backpack and was the big hero.

San Francisco is the best. All of it. Go there. Or stay here. Change your plans, lose your luggage, and go to ROLO. It's the best.

Today, I'm still in love with San Francisco. My life is full of things that I love. And I occasionally praise things by saying that they are “too cool for Cleveland.”

Spontaneity has a time and a place

I just stumbled across Mark Pesce's little rant McBurners while I was looking for something else.

I have an axe to grind. I have a fight to pick. I have a hair across my ass.

And I want to share.

It started when I decided not to go to Burning Man this year.
....

It was a hard decision to make. But an easy one to keep.

Because once I’d made the decision—and freed myself from the almost obsessive nature of the planning that precedes each trip to the Playa, all the toy hunting and costume-making and theme planning and buying buying buying—I found I could step aside from the madness which swept into and consumed all of my friends—as it had for me, year after year—and take a good, honest, objective look at it. Well, at least as objective as I can be.

And I realized something. It’s become a cult. And it’s about time we all woke the fuck up and recognized it.

I’m not saying a cult is a bad thing, mind you.

Pesce, by the way, is an all-’round interesting guy, though his website does have that unhappy tendency to create eyestrain.

Today's quote

I love watching the White House press conferences. They are very enjoyable. I love watching talented journalists who have worked their entire lives to get to the point where they are in the White House press corps, only to find themselves turned into dictation machines.

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 10 February 2004

Provided by MKB.

Mr. Stewart is a great American. It is a sign of the times that you get more truth watching his faux news comedy show than watching the Fox news channel. (Pun intended.) His show is the only force on American TV right now strong enough to make me feel genuinely tempted to get a TV and cable.

And you may be interested to know that Brad DeLong makes the more elaborate, more academic version of this same point.

Silly web cartoons

It has come to my attention that some of my readers are unfamiliar with some important time-wasting cartoons on the web. So just in case you've missed out, here are my favorites.

Strindberg and Helium
Ripped from the pages of master playwright August Strindberg's journal, these four cartoons will have you saying ''misery!'' and ''decay! decay!'' for weeks. But in a cute way.

Odd Todd
A series of cartoons about unemployment. Fun! Fun! This one will infect your discourse with the word ''coffee,'' spoken in a sleepy way.

Ill Will Press
Jump directly to ''5 More Minutes,'' then see if you can resist watching them all, then see if you can resist threatening your enemies, ''taste my squirrelly wrath!''

Strongbad's Email
Jump directly to ''Dragon,'' move on to ''Japanese cartoon,'' then see if you manage to do anything productive with your day. And don't think that seeing all of Strongbad's email is the end; if you move on to the rest of the Homestar Runner website, you will discover that these animators have way too much time on their hands.

Red vs. Blue
Video games + Samuel Beckett + adolescent humor = Magic

Pornography? On my blog?

In an odd twist of surfing the other day, I stumbled across True Porn Clerk Stories again.

Yeah, I hear that snickering out there. An ''odd twist of surfing''? You stumbled across it? Again?

Hey, I have a point here. TPCS belongs to a whole little web genre of personal anecdotes about taboo subjects. A lot of it's really witty and provocative in the thought-provoking sense. As another example, dig what Diabolo Cody has to say about being a stripper at her blog Pussy Ranch. If more strippers danced as well as Ms. Cody writes, I'd be living a more sinful life.

Colorful occupations come with colorful anecdotes. As, oftentimes, colorless occupations do, if you know where to look. TPCS offers a little bit of both: there's some interesting commentary on porn and some interesting commentary on life in a crummy service industry job. The URL for the site was pretty heavily circulated a couple of years ago, and it's pretty heavily linked now -- hence stumbling across it again.

Like just about every bourgouis member of my generation, I've had my harrowing brushes with working service industry gigs, and TPCS captures that experience very well.

The clerk is of course automatically cooler than the customer because we are accepted by the public at large as snotty arbiters of movie taste, and also because anybody with a shit job is automatically cooler than someone with a 9-to-5. Too bad, no arguing, we're cooler. Our store is a nasal jewelry, snotty film school sort of place and we employ people coldblooded enough to work with hardcore pornography every single day of our lives (Oh, all right. Just every shift.) so there are plenty of extra bonus cool points right there. I have actually had word come back to me that people sometimes hate coming to our store because they feel their relative coolness is being rather harshly judged.

... and yeah, it talks a lot about sex and pornography and the people who rent porn ...

Mr. God came in a little later. He wouldn't be a particularly distinctive renter if it weren't for the huge button he always wears, which I think is homemade:

GOD IS.
IN FULL CONTROL

I am fascinated by the quirky punctuation and always wonder if it was intentional and, if so, what that means.

Mr. God always rents hardcore porn, and it's hard to keep myself from having a knee-jerk snotty reaction to that. If he's so pious, why is he renting Freaks, Hos and Flows? Which would be a good point on my part if it weren't so hypocritical. One of my beefs with traditional Christianity is that most sects treat sex as a dirty or sinful thing. I like the fact that say, Taoism, treats sex as not only good but sacred. Why the hell can't God be. In full control and enjoy a little porn?

Ali Davis has lots more to say, and she has another weblog, Aspiring Hollywood Phony, which you might want to check out as well.

AWOL

Having trouble making sense of the story about Bush shirking his national guard duty? Confused by rhetoric from Bush's defenders?

David Neiwert once again explains lucidly and at length; his most recent post unpacks recent developments plus includes links to his previous notes on the subject.

Dynasty, not conspiracy

Atrios points out that Paul Krugman has a terrific article in the New York Review of Books about Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush and Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

2002 was the year of corporate scandals; for a brief period the revelations of chicanery at Enron, WorldCom, and other pillars of the economy seemed likely to dominate the midterm election. Instead, the administration -- after making a few gestures toward corporate reform and grudgingly agreeing to a small increase in the SEC's budget -- beat the drums of war, and drowned the issue out.

Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a simple answer: ''SEC overreach.'' That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:

O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing -- SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?

Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush -- whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments -- was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.

If you like dirt like that, you'll love the article.

Everybody needs Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert not only has movie reviews published on the web, he maintains an entertaining column called Movie Answer Man, in which he answers reader mail.

A couple of years ago, he kept a running joke alive in the column for an astonshingly long time.

It started with his review of Heist.

Gene Hackman plays a jewel thief who dreams of taking his last haul and sailing into the sunset with his young wife (Rebecca Pidgeon). Danny DeVito is the low-rent mastermind who forces him into pulling one last job. Hackman complains he doesn't need any more money.

DeVito's wounded reply is one of the funniest lines Mamet has ever written: “Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!”

But this didn't make sense to everyone, so a week or two later Movie Answer Man had to speak to it.

Q. In your review of Heist, you say that the line, ''Everyone needs money. That's why they call it money!'' is one of the funniest lines that David Mamet has ever written. Why is it funny and how do you interpret it? I saw the film this weekend and heard the same line, yet I feel it just doesn't work.
Rory L. Aronsky, Pembroke Pines, Fla.

A. Ali Hirji of Edmonton agrees with you: “I personally do not understand what is so clever about this line, since it seems to have no meaning beyond its literal meaning.” Why is it funny? As Louis Armstrong once said, “There are some folks that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.”

But Ebert evidently got even more mail as a result of this comment.

Q. Re your item about the line in David Mamet's Heist, “Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!” I was wondering myself what was so funny about the line. You quoted Louis Armstrong but you didn't give us an answer as to why YOU thought it was so funny because, I guess, some of us are probably too dense to “get it.” Could you please enlighten us anyway on why you think it's so funny? To me, the word has no meaning beyond its literal meaning.
Binh Ha, Waterloo, Ontario

A. Of course it has no meaning beyond its literal meaning! That's why it's so funny! This is the question that will not go away. Juan-Jose Pichardo of Chicago also writes: “No, really, explain Mamet's money joke.” I cannot explain it. I can only laugh at it, and quote Gene Siskel, who liked to say, “Two things are not debatable: eroticism, and comedy. If you don't think it's sexy, or funny, there's no way I can change your mind.”

I thought that was the end of it. But not for Ebert. The following week, the Answer Man faced a completely different question.

Q. I was looking through the quotes section of the Internet Movie Database and ran across this exchange from Me and My Pal (1933):

Oliver: You know what a magnet is, don't you?

Stan: Sure, it's a thing that eats cheese.

I must not be as fluent in old movie/vaudeville jokes as I thought I was. “Magnet” sounds nothing like “mouse,” so I'm stumped, unless it's just Stan Laurel being silly, I'm stumped.
David Westhart, Philadelphia, Pa.

A. Everybody likes magnets. That's why they call them magnets.

...which just confused the Answer Man's public even more ...

Q. Jeez, you really make us work! In a recent Answer Man, someone asked you to explain the Laurel & Hardy joke about a magnet being something that likes cheese. Your response was, “Everyone likes magnets. That's why they call them magnets.” WHAT were you referring to? I searched through recent AMs until I found debate on the David Mamet line from Heist about how everybody needs money: “That's why they call it money.” I laughed then, and laughed again today.
Paul J. Marasa, Galesburg, Ill.

A. As many readers pointed out, including David E. Miller of Las Vegas, Howard Hoffman of Sterling, Va., and Edward Sullivan of San Francisco, Laurel and Hardy were making a play on “magnets” and “maggots.” Readers who don't think Mamet's line about money is funny continue to write me. I encourage them to write one another.

Finally, Ebert took drastic action, as the Answer Man explained a bit later.

Faithful readers will recall several entries since November about a line in David Mamet's Heist that I said was the funniest he had ever written. Gene Hackman is a thief who wants to retire. Danny DeVito wants him to do one more job, for the money. Hackman says he doesn't like money. DeVito replies: “Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!” (Earlier I quoted this as “likes” money, which is just as funny—but inaccurate, as Peter Debruge of AOL Movies informs me.)

Many readers said they did not see anything funny about this line. I quoted Louis Armstrong: “There are some folks that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.” More protest. I quoted Gene Siskel: “Comedy and eroticism are not debatable. Either it works for you or it doesn't.” This also failed to satisfy many readers.

In desperation I sent the whole correspondence to David Mamet himself, and have received the following reply:

Thank you for your update on the Heist controversy. A lot of people didn't even think ‘World War One’ was funny. So it just shows to go you.

Additionally, Clausewitz's On War was, it seems, originally issued as a serio-comic ‘memoire’ of life in a garret. (Orig. title Tales of a Garterbelt.)

I see where our beloved president has taken to speaking of “terriers and barriffs.” Can he mean “Braniff(s)?”

“Humor is where one finds it” —George Dandin

With all best wishes,
David.

And I thought that was well and truly the end. But no, not quite yet.

Months later, Ebert reviews The Scorpion King.

Special effects send Mathayus and others catapulting into harems, falling from castle walls and narrowly missing death by fire, scorpion, poisonous cobra, swordplay, arrows, explosion and being buried up to the neck in the sand near colonies of fire ants. And that's not even counting the Valley of the Death, which inspires the neo-Mametian dialogue: “No one goes to the Valley of the Death. That's why it's called the Valley of the Death.”

---

Update: David Ziegler and Jacques Derrida explain the original joke!

Cloud

My soul sister Alysse used to have a comforter she referred to as The Cloud. I think of that as I look at this extremely mysterious ''Cloud'' product. I don't know what it is, but I think I may want one.

Home decor

Just had another silly little web thing brought to my attention. Waste some time! There's a twist ending!

Today's quote

The document the White House has submitted this week cannot be taken seriously as a budget. As vast and extensive as this budget seems, the Administration has omitted essential facts and data that will have enormous consequences for our fiscal future and our economy. There is not a dime in this budget to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that the CBO estimates the cost of these efforts in the coming years will exceed $200 billion. In addition, by stopping short and projecting five years ahead, the budget hides the full cost of the President's tax breaks. When you include the five years after the budget projections stop, the President's tax breaks will add trillions more to the national debt.

Tom Daschle, Senate Democrat Leader

By way of Atrios, who has a bit more of this quote if you're feeling up for a little more fire on the budget.

Evil

No doubt you are already familiar with the famous Evil Overlord List.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, ''Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?'' I'll say, ''No.'' and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say ''No.''
...
No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
...
When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

For those of you well-versed in the important guidelines it contains, I can now offer a complete evil plan generator, courtesy of the diabolical, really cool Diane Riley-Cole.

Systemic problems with the Washington press corps

One of the reasons you should be reading Brad DeLong regularly is his ongoing discussion of the failures of our press corps. He has an interesting post on the subject today.

I have received a number of emails from various journalism insiders defending or excusing Jonathan Weisman, which make some interesting points that I would like to share:
...
Jonathan Weisman responded to my critique that one of his news articles from the Washington Post read like a rewritten White House press release by writing:

F*** Brad DeLong. The first piece put on the web is slapped together as quickly as possible, and the guy for some reason doesn't like me. Here's my analysis

...
All--well most of--these points seem to me to be good ones. But they suggest that what we have here is a much deeper, profound, structural problem. It's much more than a lack of editorial quality control.

My favorite legal theorist

Lawrence Lessig is a great American. A constitutional lawyer, with experience helping formerly communist countries create new legal systems, Lessig has been working on the deep questions of law in the era of software and digital media for the past several years. His book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is one of the best books on any subject I've ever read. It's a lucid and readable work that is a good introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the fundamentals of legal thinking, open source software, or the intersection between the two.

Lessig gets it. Most importantly, he sees that our intellectual property law has become irrational, inconsistent, and counterproductive, and lays out what we can do to fix it. His energies have been devoted lately to Creative Commons, an organization creating the legal infrastructure for alternatives to copyright. You can now apply a range of creative commons liscenses to works that allow you to protect it in various different ways: allowing free use so long as you are attributed as the author, or so long as the use is non-commercial, or so long as it remains unmodified, and so on.

Whether you already know about Lessig or not, you should take a few minutes to check out this talk of his, which sums up a lot of the issues around how we handle copyright. The site provides a very cleverly done animation to go with the talk.

Today's quote

The ‘wardrobe incident’ during half time was the scene stealer of the Super Bowl. In fact, the half time show during the Super Bowl is now running a close second to the commercials as the most compelling content for viewers. The actual contest on the field continues to be the secondary event during the Super Bowl.

Marty Yudkovitz, President of TiVo

From a mind-boggling press release on the TiVo website, by way of Clive Thomson.

Miles Drentell

I'm sad to learn that Miles Drentell has died of cancer. He's only a fictional character, I know. But unlike Spock, he isn't coming back.

Miles was the evil ad agency boss on thirtysomething, and then emerged later from that weird TV character limbo.

I think of him every time I hear the word “covenant,” because of what Miles said to his employee Michael on the next-to-last episode of thirtysomething. In the episode, Michael had a freakout in front of their client about how unethical it was for that client to fire their celebrity spokesman for participating in an antiwar protest.

I'm curious to know, Michael, just what you think this company does? On a very basic level, you seem ignorant of what you and I do for a living. Have you been sleepwalking all this time? In a trance? I don't know how else to explain you coming in here with that “I'd like to buy the world a Dursten” concept.

The thing that most apalls me is your hypocrisy. Do you actually imagine there's some difference between this campaign and everything else that we do?

[Michael protests that there has to be]

Or what?

You know what I love about this country? Its amazingly short memory. We're a nation of amnesiacs. We forget everything. Where we came from. What we did to get here. History is last week's People magazine, Michael. So don't pretend to cry for Randy Towers. No one really cares.

Michael: All he did was express an opinion.

He expressed an unpopular opinion. No one wants to be unpopular. That's why we're here. That's the dance of advertising. We help people become popular. Through popularity comes acceptance. Acceptance leads to assimilation. Assimilation leads to bliss.

We calm and reassure. We embrace people with the message that we're all in it together. That our leaders are infallible and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong. That is what we do. It's what we've always done, and under your gifted sterwardship, what we will continue to do, onward toward the millennium.

In return for our humanitarian service, we are made rich.

I'm sorry if you misunderstood the nature of this covenant, but you've done so well up 'till now. I thought you knew.

Whaddya know? Crooks and Liars has the clip!

What happened at Camp David in 2000?

Posts on this subject are obviously fraught, so first:

• I keep an index of resources
• the moral question is simple:
  Palestinian liberation is right & necessary
• the history is complicated:
  I have a survey which addresses many common misunderstandings
• the praxis is complicated:
  antisemitic entryism into the movement for liberation is subtle, pervasive, and unacceptable

The August 2001 New York Review Of Books article Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors by Robert Malley & Hussein Agha not only offers a nuanced and clarifying explanation of why the talks in Camp David sponsored by Clinton broke down, it also kicks off the discussion with everyone’s favorite rhetorical device, the Holy Roman Empire essay question.

In accounts of what happened at the July 2000 Camp David summit and the following months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, we often hear about Ehud Barak’s unprecedented offer and Yasser Arafat’s uncompromising no. Israel is said to have made a historic, generous proposal, which the Palestinians, once again seizing the opportunity to miss an opportunity, turned down. In short, the failure to reach a final agreement is attributed, without notable dissent, to Yasser Arafat.

As orthodoxies go, this is a dangerous one. For it has larger ripple effects. Broader conclusions take hold. That there is no peace partner is one. That there is no possible end to the conflict with Arafat is another.

For a process of such complexity, the diagnosis is remarkably shallow. It ignores history, the dynamics of the negotiations, and the relationships among the three parties. In so doing, it fails to capture why what so many viewed as a generous Israeli offer, the Palestinians viewed as neither generous, nor Israeli, nor, indeed, as an offer. Worse, it acts as a harmful constraint on American policy by offering up a single, convenient culprit — Arafat — rather than a more nuanced and realistic analysis.

2024 update

I am expanding this post because the article has been immensely valuable to me not just in explaining that moment but as a clarifying exemplar of the the tragic dynamics characteristic of the conflict for decades both before and after. So I want to emphasize how the article is long and well worth your time.

And for the impatient, I have discovered a pair of letters about the article by Gidi Grinstein & Ambassador Dennis Ross, published by NYRB. It includes a long reply by the authors of the article which nicely summarizes its key observations and adds some telling particulars:

Our article does not assign blame or catalog each side’s respective mistakes. Rather, it shows how the historical context and conduct of the negotiations shaped the parties’ attitudes and effectively undermined the possibility of a deal. Dennis wishes to treat Arafat’s behavior at Camp David in a vacuum — divorced from what had occurred during the seven years since Oslo and the twelve months since Barak had become prime minister; and divorced, too, from political dynamics on the Palestinian side. But it is no more possible to do this than it is to divorce Barak’s behavior from Israel’s parallel experience or from its own political realities.

Years of accumulated mistrust and loss of faith in the peace process, political circumstances in Israel and among the Palestinians, the history of prior agreements, perceptions of the United States’ role, the relationship (or lack thereof) between Barak and Arafat, the mechanics of the negotiations — all these contributed to a situation in which each side’s actions were interpreted by the other in the most damaging way. For instance, Barak’s decisions not to implement some of the interim commitments made at Oslo and afterward, and not to turn over three Jerusalem-area neighborhoods to the Palestinians, were consistent with his desire to seek a comprehensive deal and therefore entirely logical from his point of view; but those decisions were seen by the Palestinians merely as further examples of Israel’s ignoring its obligations and seeking to maximize the pressure it was bringing to bear on them.

To say that these steps undermined the prospects for a deal is not to engage in a post hoc attempt to absolve Arafat. Indeed, as Dennis well knows, the US administration’s concern at the time about their potential negative impact was such (given the frailty of the process and the already highly suspicious mood on the Palestinian side) that US negotiators repeatedly sought to persuade Barak to modify his approach. Nothing in what Dennis writes demonstrates that Arafat’s alleged inability to reach a deal, rather than the overall context and the clash of opposing mindsets, was responsible for the failure to achieve an agreement.

Dennis fears that our article will reinforce the Palestinians’ belief that it is “never their fault.” But it surely is symptomatic of the skewed nature of today’s debate that our article, which describes how the Palestinians’ actions — and inaction — contributed to the breakdown in the negotiations, can be characterized as absolving the Palestinians of blame. There also is considerable irony in worrying that the Palestinians will avoid responsibility when, to date, they are the only ones to have been held accountable for the failure to reach a deal. In reality, the predominant view that Arafat alone is to blame has spared both Israel and the United States from the necessity of self-critical analysis.

Of course, the Palestinians made serious mistakes. As Gidi Grinstein observes in his letter, we mention quite a few of them; and Dennis adds others. (In particular, Dennis points to their claim that the Jewish Temple was not in Jerusalem — an offensive position that cannot be excused.) But the question is not whether Arafat made mistakes, or whether these were justified. The question is whether his behavior can be explained by factors other than his presumed inability to put an an end to the conflict. A close scrutiny of events, we believe, shows that it can.

One of the more unsettling consequences of the notion that the failure of the negotiations was caused by Arafat’s incapacity to reach a deal is that it obscures the significant substantive progress that was made. Dennis notes that Barak was prepared to “do what was necessary” to reach an agreement and we, too, noted that he broke many taboos. But Dennis refers only in passing to the Palestinians’ “concessions,” attributing them to “negotiators” as if they had nothing to do with Arafat.

The fact is that Camp David and the talks that followed demonstrated that, at their core, Israeli and Palestinian interests are compatible. For Israel those interests include its continued existence as a Jewish state; genuine security; Jewish Jerusalem as its recognized capital; respect and acknowledgment of its connection to holy Jewish sites. For the Palestinians they include a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital and sovereignty over its Muslim and Christian holy sites; meaningful sovereignty; and a just settlement of the refugee issue. In short, both sides share a fundamental interest in realizing their national right of self-determination within internationally recognized borders on the basis of the two-state solution.

This may not suggest that a deal was readily at hand. But can we, on this record, maintain that it was out of reach? And that, on the basis of a hurried, unsuccessful six-month effort, we are better off giving up on the current Palestinian leadership and placing our hopes on a gamble that as yet unknown but presumably more flexible leaders will somehow emerge?

To solve a one-hundred-year conflict in a matter of months is a daunting task even under the best of circumstances — without the miscalculations, missteps, and mismatched timetables that occurred before and during Camp David. In this sense, paradoxically, this tragedy of errors contains a message of hope. For it points to the possibility that things can turn out differently if they are done differently.

I added this long quote shortly after the 1-year anniversary of Hamas’ 7 Oct 2023 attack and the dawn of Israel’s genocidal attack in response, a moment when it is hard not to despair over the horrors in front of us and the cycle of both bad faith and honest mistakes which brought us here.

But. That last note of hope — “at their core, Israeli and Palestinian interests are compatible” and “things can turn out differently if they are done differently” — does still stand, in the long run which is all too far off.

Told you so

Remember I told you to read Republic Dogs, a takeoff on Plato's Republic in the style of a Quentin Tarantino script?

Go read it again. Then check out the teaser trailer for Wolfgang Petersen's upcoming film Troy.

In praise of our Boop-a-Doop girl

So a couple of years ago I was reading about Betty Boop and I learn that she's based on a real person, Helen Kane, a very popular jazz singer of the 1920s who had a squeaky voice. Her signature song was “He's So Unusual”.

And I laugh, because I'm getting a joke almost 20 years late.

Cyndi Lauper's first album, the one that has all of those pop songs you remember from the ’80s, was entitled She's So Unusual, which I thought was clever at the time given her wacky style. But now I really got it. By the time I was sixteen or so I had already grown snide about contemporary pop and had turned to the Beatles and Velvet Underground and was getting turned on to punk, but I couldn't resist Cyndi Lauper: that album was everything pop should be and so rarely is, including smart.

So the other day I go to see a show where this singer does a heartbreaking version of “You Really Got A Hold On Me”. Well, all versions of it are heartbreaking for me thanks to an unhappy romance many years ago. Still, it was a terrific rendition, and it occurs to me that this would be a good excuse to check out the iTunes function for buying songs individually.

I was looking for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, but about a million people have done cover versions of the song. Including Cyndi Lauper. So I'm curious, and I listen to the sample, and wow -- a minute later I'm downloading her entire new album of her singing Motown and standards, At Last.

Spare arrangements, distinctive renditions, and the girl's got pipes. Check it out.

Why “Miniver Cheevy”?

“Miniver Cheevy” is the title of a semi-autobiographical poem by Edward Arlington Robinson.

I first read the poem, and took a liking to it, in high school. The image of the suffering romantic poet spoke to my adolescent sensibilities. Around the same time, I joined a BBS: direct dialup to a computer in someone's basement. (Oh yeah, I'm online old skool: I remember when FidoNet was cutting edge.)

So I needed a login ID. The ideal login ID is short, unique, distinctive, easy to remember, hard to misspell, and says something about your temperament, which makes “miniver” pretty much ideal. I've used it for dozens of systems since then, though not so much lately.

When I finally broke down and decided to write a blog, I realized that it fits in perfectly with the prevailing style of distinctive names in blogistan, so I brought it out of retirement.

---

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn
    Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
    And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
   When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
   Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
   And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
   And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
   That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
   And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
   Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
   Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
   And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
   Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
   But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
   And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
   Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
   And kept on drinking.

---

By Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), from The Town Down the River, 1910

---

The Modern American Poetry site provides a collection of analysis of the poem.

Trompe d'oleil

Astonishing sidewalk chalk illustrations

Look at that first one carefully.

Chaos

A friend of mine is stranded out in America for a while. People like me, with weird interests, are pretty thin on the ground out there, which is why I try to stay here in San Francisco as much as possible.

But the internet solves all problems, and Tribe.net reports that there is, of course, a bit of a goth community in this part of America, and that many of them are chaos magickians. And it occurs to me that there must be throngs of other people reading this who also want my guidance about hanging with chaos magickians.

Here's the deal. Chaos magick can be described as the controlled art of going usefully crazy. Don't knock it on that basis: joining the United States Marine Corps, getting an advanced degree in physics, and becoming a method actor also involve going usefully crazy. But as with other craziness-inducing pursuits, things can go wrong, so some folks describing themselves as chaos magickians are crazy in an entirely tiresome and useless way.

I strongly recommend bringing as many chaos magickians into your social circle as you can manage, but you do want to do some triage. When you meet a chaos magickian, presume that they are crazy, and keep an eye out for what kind of crazy they are.

Plus, it's good to know what they're talking about. If you've read some Robert Anton Wilson (you know who you are, out there) you've got a leg up. Do not expect them to be impressed that you've read the Illuminatus trilogy, folks; I'm talking about the weird stuff published by New Falcon. But to be truly cool, and perhaps become a chaos magickian yourself, read Phil Hine's little monograph Oven-Ready Chaos, which contains everything you need to know. Indeed, it contains Everything You Need to Know. And it's only 68 pages! Including a mapping of characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the qabalistic tree-of-life diagram!

Want more? Here's an index of key resources.

In case you're interested

There's a terrific little entry on strange matter in the Wikipedia, pointed out to me by a friend who shares my opinion that the evidence that the universe will end in heat death is a major bummer.

Strange matter is composed of strange quarks bound to each other directly, in a similar manner to how neutronium is composed of neutrons; a strange star is essentially a single gigantic nucleon .... Some theories suggest that strange matter, unlike neutronium, may be stable outside of the intense pressure that produced it; if this is so, then small substellar pieces of strange stars (sometimes called "strangelets") may exist in space in a wide range of sizes ....

Well, heat death may be a bummer but strange matter is cool. Obviously, this is the solution to the problem of what the Ringworld's floor material is made of.

The material the Ringworld is made of, scrith, is fictional. The stresses such an artifact would undergo are so strong that the tensile strength of scrith approaches that of the strong nuclear force, which holds atoms together.

alt.wesley.die.die.die

It turns out that Wil Wheaton, the actor who played geeky kid Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, actually is a geeky kid. Well, he's about 30 now, so perhaps not really a ''kid'' any more, but yet another geeky young man with an intermittantly charming weblog.

Hey, you in the back row, don't give me that. I am not nearly so geeky as Mr. Wheaton, my weblog is much more interesting, and I get about a billionth as much traffic to my site here. Cool and exclusive, that's me.

My point is, the man actually has a good sense of humor about being a famous actor in a way that entirely fails to impress girls, in a way that indeed connects him to a character vigorously hated by other guys just like him. So I very much enjoyed his bittersweet post about the quiet death of Wesley Crusher.

I'd heard the rumors online. Of course, I tend to not put a whole lot of stock in what I read online ... if I did I'd be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of hot teen bitches who want to get naked for me right now, and I'd be rolling in Nigerian money.

But it made sense, and I couldn't fight what I knew in my heart to be true.