Finally! At long last, someone has had the ingenious idea—and the courage to realize it—of bringing religion to teh internetz!
President Bush will return to the Gulf Coast next week, where hard times and resentment linger two years after Hurricane Katrina's massive strike. … On Wednesday, the anniversary of the storm, he is expected to examine recovery efforts in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.Of course it didn't.
…Bush's trip will be his 15th stop in the region since the hurricane, but only his second since he visited during the one-year anniversary last August. The Gulf Coast's plight did not even get a mention in his State of the Union address this year.
In New Orleans today, despite progress, signs of a shattered city abound. Neighborhoods are in ruins. Crime, inadequate health care and faulty infrastructure are pervasive.It's good to be king.
…Meanwhile, Bush is nearing the end of a vacation at his ranch in central Texas, where's he been biking and clearing brush in the searing heat. He arrived in Crawford on Wednesday afternoon and has no public events scheduled through Sunday.
Here are the last of my reviews from the Stratford Festival of Canada: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde and The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare... who as far as I can tell, did not have a sister, nor was he one.
The Comedy of Errors - by Mel Brooks
The only thing missing from Stratford's production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors was somebody saying, "Walk this way," and then exiting Stage Left with a limp or a hitch and everybody following along. Other than that, they went for the full-tilt broad farce that this play really needs and pretty much hit all the marks, if not the Marx Brothers.
The plot is a simple one that gets complex when it's described: two sets of identical twins who don't know about their own counterparts get confused by people and end up being accused of doing things they did or didn't do until at the very end they figure it out and all is set right. Got that? Okay, that's all you need, and let the madness begin. There's lots of opportunities for stock characters, split-second timing, planned ad-libs, inside-Stratford jokes (I didn't get the one about the penguin), and a lot of running gags -- literally. There can't be a moment's pause or it will all seem woefully absurd, so you just keep going on frantically, keep the jokes and the slapstick coming, and the two hours -- the shortest Shakespeare play on record -- go by in a flash. And a bang.
The Stratford production is lavish in bright colors and commedia del arte overtones, and it works very well. The setting -- first century A.D. Greece -- was perhaps the convention because of the original story being from that time, but it was also an unconscious reminder of History of the World, Part I, and it worked as well as the Brooksian effort, except, perhaps with a nod to knowing the age and temperament to the Midwestern audience, without the profanity. The jokes worked and the actors playing the twins looked enough alike that it was easy to accept the mistaken identities premise. The two Dromios -- Bruce Dow and Steve Ross -- could have been twins. The actors playing the Antipholuses not so much; David Snelgrove as Antipholus of Syracuse looked like he was in his twenties, while it would be a generous stretch to say that Tom McCamus was the same age. In a farce, the audience has to be in on the joke that the rest of the cast isn't, so the important thing is not whether or not we the audience believe they can be mistaken for each other; it's whether or not the other characters believe it for it to work. (And I can't help but think there was a subconscious influence on me when I created the characters of Donny and Danny and Eric and Greg in Small Town Boys, but that's another post.)
The first time I saw The Comedy of Errors at Stratford was in 1981 when the director set it in the Old West and used the model of the Maverick brothers for the Antipholus characters and Gabby Hayes as the model for the Dromios. That memorable production set the standard, but this production rose to it, and while I don't really know why they had a six-foot penguin with the sign "Just For the Critics" waddle across the stage, it was still a riot.
PS: Last night as we were leaving the restaurant to go to the theatre, we came upon Graham Greene sitting on a bench enjoying an after-dinner cigarette. I complimented him on his portrayal of Shylock and we chatted about the play and his approach to the character. That's one of the other nice things about doing theatre in a small town; the cast, crew, and audience all mingle together, the known and the unknown. (In 1981 I sat behind Lauren Bacall at a production of Richard III starring Brian Bedford.) It's not unlike the experience at the William Inge Festival in Independence, Kansas; truly "community theatre."
An Ideal Husband: Something Wilde
Who am I to argue with Richard Monette, the artistic director of the Stratford Festival? From the program notes for the Stratford production of An Ideal Husband:From the time of [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan -- about a hundred years before -- until Wilde, there isn't a single play we produce now. During that hundred years, more people went to the theatre than ever before, but the plays were mediocre. So the works of Oscar Wilde represent a renewal of excellence in English dramatic literature.
If we take Mr. Monette at his word, if it wasn't for Oscar Wilde, the idea of witty, well-written, and socially important English drama may never have been revived, and without his influence, writers such as George Bernard Shaw and those who followed here in North America would never have evolved. It's awfully hard to imagine what writers such as George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart and even Neil Simon would have written had it not been for the influence of Oscar Wilde.
That's a pretty bold statement, but when you look at a play such as An Ideal Husband or Man and Superman or even The Importance of Being Earnest, it's hard to argue with it. Combining a satirical look at turn-of-the-20th-century London society and the timeless battle of wits between the sexes, Wilde was able to get audiences to laugh at themselves and their social manners then, and still a hundred years later, get us to do the same.
The plot of An Ideal Husband is pretty straightforward: Sir Robert Chiltern, a member of Parliament who is seen as a man of untarnished virtue, is the victim of blackmail for something he did years before. He coaxes his friend, Lord Arthur Goring, a profligate and playboy, into helping him get out of the jam and keep his wife unaware of the situation. It has all the makings of a door-slamming farce, yet it devotes more time to actually exploring the characters and their situation rather than just have people running around mistaking people for other people or hiding in other rooms. (Fear not; there's a fair share of that going on.) All the while we are treated to a virtual avalanche of Wilde's patented witticisms and epigrams: "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." In the end the plot is undone, the blackmailer is defeated, Sir Robert and his wife are reconciled, and Lord Arthur is engaged to be married. All's well that ends well, you know.
What lies beneath, though, is Wilde's insurgent campaign as a feminist and a socialist. His women are always portrayed as equals in terms of character and wit, often out-showing the men in terms of sense and awareness of what they are capable of accomplishing. The fact that the "villain," so to speak, in this play is a woman isn't a slight against her or her sex; it's an affirmation that women are fully capable of being just as conniving as a man and on their own terms. It's clear that even in a farce such as The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde gives his women the full stage to make their case as equals, much to the befuddlement of the "superior" men. That he also uses the conventions of love and marriage isn't so much a nod to the social convention of the times but rather just another arrow in the arsenal to prove that women can get what they want, and if that is happiness in marriage, then it isn't subjugation at all. His influence on other playwrights is also clear: Shaw, for instance with Man and Superman, Saint Joan, and Major Barbara, imbues his women with equal status and strength, often to the awe and shocked admiration of the men.
The second element of this play is the use of politics and corruption as the plot device that drives the story forward. Intrigues about bribery and influence-peddling are just as interesting now as they were then. It's not hard to imagine this play being staged with contemporary names like Jack Abramoff and Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the cast, but certainly neither of them were as classy as Wilde's characters. But it does make the story as true today as it was then.
The Stratford production is a perfect combination of wit, grace, elegance, and dry humor. David Snelgrove as Lord Goring really gets the part of the Wilde dandy; self-aware and even self-mocking. Tom McCamus as Sir Robert plays the part of the wronged politician with the remorse and frustration that allows you to care for him and make you happy to see him rescued from his dilemma. The women are given their full dimension as well by Brigit Wilson as Sir Robert's wife and Dixie Seatle as the blackmailing Mrs. Cheveley. Thankfully the production itself is done in full Victorian glory with set pieces and costumes that reflect the time and place and help the actors portray so well the era that Mr. Wilde satirized so well, knowing that if you're going to make fun of something, you have to give it its due in all its original glory.
Here endeth the dramaturgy. Back to my regular posting of drivel when I get back to work.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday raised the prospect of a terror attack before next year's election, warning that it could boost the GOP's efforts to hold on to the White House.Matt Yglesias calls the remarks a disaster, suggesting instead that "the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans." Josh Marshall agrees, noting that such a contention "signals a lack of confidence either in your own policies or the American people's reasoning powers. And quite possibly both."
…"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.
"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added.
...I have been watching this video over and over and just laughing my fool head off.
She told The Advocate: "George Bush is absolutely a fascist piece of shit. As a radical queer, there's never anybody I can 100% trust in politics. It's a fucking joke to even call it a debate with the idea that we (haven't yet treated) human beings like they are on the same par with everyone else, from homos to immigrants. It's two-thousand-fucking-seven, get with the program, you know?"Ditto. Heh.
A Republican political consultant and two other men were found dead in a home in an apparent double-murder and suicide, authorities and relatives said. Authorities have not determined a motive for the deaths of Ralph Gonzalez, 39, his roommate, David Abrami, 36, and a friend, Robert Drake, 30.Yikes.
Investigators found weapons and signs of a struggle in the house, but they did not say what the weapons were or which man they believe was the killer. The men are believed to have died several days before the bodies were discovered Thursday.
No one wants to get involved:
A 25-year-old man was charged Thursday for allegedly raping and beating a woman in an apartment hallway -- an incident apparently witnessed by as many as 10 people who did nothing.Eventually, police showed up after responding to a call about "drunken behavior" in the apartment hallway, where they found the alleged rapist Rage Ibrahim (appropriate name) and the woman both lying unconscious, she with her clothing pulled up and bearing "fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh."
The 26-year-old victim knocked on a door at one point, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he didn't open the door or look out, but said he did call police -- although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.Nonetheless, and despite Minnesota's Good Samaritan law which ostensibly compels people to provide reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm," and makes it a petty misdemeanor if they don't, none of the neighbors are likely to be charged—because "authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger," and what sensible adult could be expected to conclude that a woman beaten until she was bleeding, screaming for help, and being raped was in danger of "grave physical harm," right?
…Walsh said police were upset by the behavior of the bystanders. "It's not what we expect of responsible citizens," he said.
"If you're not comfortable, if you don't feel capable of intervening, that's fine," Walsh said. "But not calling is not understandable."
[The complaint] said the woman was visiting the apartment of a friend, where she met Ibrahim; after drinking for several hours, she told police Ibrahim tried to stop her from leaving, and began to assault her.Yeah, I mean, why rape her out in the hallway where there might have been witnesses? They might do absolutely nothing!
Ibrahim denied to police that he tried to rape the woman, saying if he wanted to do so he would have done it in the apartment, according to the complaint.
No, this is not another theatre review, but after seeing The Merchant of Venice and hearing the speech about the quality of mercy, I was reminded of a post that I wrote last year after President Bush signed another of his brow-beaten-into-law laws that is supposed to fight the GWOT but merely drags down the Constitution. Here it is again; it's just as true now as last October.
President Bush signed a law that creates a parallel legal system for military detainees. It eliminates the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens, removes many of the basic rules of evidence for these defendants, and gives the president the right to basically declare anyone he wants as an "enemy combatant." Anyone.
I've heard all the excuses: we're at war, the terrorists have lost all their rights to humane treatment, do unto them before they do unto us, and so on and so forth. I guess we could come up with any rationalization that fits into a soundbite or campaign commercial, but when you get right down to it, it's all just an excuse to exact revenge and respond in a visceral way to barbarism.
I freely admit that my knowledge of the law is based primarily on what I've picked up from television and Shakespeare, so I can't claim any greater insight to it than any other person who hasn't been to law school. But even a cursory examination of the foundation of the laws of this country and of Western civilization teaches us that we have a system that is dedicated to justice, not revenge. Justice means that we do not respond to a horrible crime by committing the same level of horror in response. We have matured from the level of exacting punishment as described in the Old Testament of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," because if we had not, we'd be a nation of blind people gumming our Cream of Wheat.
I've heard a lot of people -- especially those on the right who claim to stand for law'n'order -- say that "terrorists don't deserve the same rights I have." Aside from the fact that rights aren't something you "deserve," under the new law it's all too easy to define what a "terrorist" is. The president may decide that terrorism isn't just confined to taking up arms against the United States or trying to pack C-4 into your Reeboks; he could decide that snarky bloggers or anti-war Quakers in Broward County fall into that category. Pshaw, you say; the president would never go that far. Well, excuse my cynicism, but a president who has already shown contempt for the laws already on the books and who uses his violation of the laws as his justification for asking for new laws to give him the power to do just that has already shown a willingness to define what terrorism is without any acknowledgement of the constraints of Constitutional law.
The counterattack from the right wing is the same predictable cant: you lefties are soft on terrorism and you care more about the rights of criminals than you do about the rights of citizens. The first claim is bogus and not worth repudiating, but the second one is truly the heart of the matter. The concept that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty gets a lot of lip service, but in our current climate it's become an endangered species. But it's the heart of our system of justice, and no one is considered guilty of a crime until a jury has rendered a verdict. Up to that moment, the accused is entitled to every right available to him under the law. If we shortchange that, what's the point of having a justice system at all? Why not just shoot them in the head as soon as you catch them? It certainly would reduce the caseload on the courts. (That's another lame excuse for eliminating habeas corpus; the courts would be clogged. Lack of prior planning is no reason to deny a defendant his rights.)
I don't know what they teach in law school, but I believe that one of the basic tenets of our justice system is a quality that is not written in Blackstone or the US Criminal Code. Our laws may be the foundation of our civil society, but it is our humanity -- our capacity and desire to show mercy even for the worst among us -- that gives it our soul. As Shakespeare notes,The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It is not weakness to administer equal justice; it is what separates the noble experiment and idea of America from every other system of government, and it is one of the primary reasons this nation was founded in the first place. Terrorists don't win when they are granted the same rights as other defendants, and equal protection under the law shouldn't be conditioned on the accident of birth within or without the borders of the United States; a person before the bar is still a human being no matter what country issued his passport. If anything, it is a sign of weakness and desperation to stack the deck against a defendant; it's conceding that we have no faith in the justice system and must exact our revenge in a way that brings us down to the same level as the criminal.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
So, yesterday, Republican Senator John Warner threw himself a press conference. Having spent four whole days in and around Iraq, he was ready to make some "recommendations" to the president. And, wow, it was quite spectacular:
It seems to me the time has come to put some meaningful teeth into those comments, to back them up with some clear, decisive action to show that we mean business when those statements and others like it have been made.Damn, bitch gone crazy!! Five thousand whole troops by Christmas—without a timetable, making it a totally pointless, symbolic gesture?! Slow down there, Warner—you could give yourself a heart attack with such radical recommendations!
And so, therefore, I make a recommendation to the president. … I say to the president, respectfully, pick what ever number you wish. You do not want to lose the momentum, but certainly in 160,000- plus, say, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year.
…He need not lay out a totality of a timetable. I would advise against it.
…That simple announcement of a single redeployment of some several thousand individuals under the military tradition — first-come, first-served in Iraq, first to depart — you’ve got to be careful how those selections — they can pick them from various units; put together a group and send them back. Then evaluate, re-evaluate how successful it has been. Then perhaps, at the president’s discretion, select a second date and time for a contingent to be redeployed.
The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.Superb.
Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show.
…“There is no way we would go back,” said [Aswaidi, 26, a Sunni Arab who was driven out of her Baghdad neighborhood by Shiite snipers]. “It is a city of ghosts. The only people left there are terrorists.”
What are the best and worst films inspired by TV shows?
Best: I haven't seen The Simpsons Movie yet, so I can't comment on that, although I imagine it will be on a lot of your best lists, and, from what I hear, rightly so. The South Park Movie and The Brady Bunch Movie are pretty good TV-to-film remakes, but probably my all-time favorite is The Fugitive.
Worst: I've never seen Charlie's Angels, mainly because it looked pretty horrible. I tried it once, and saw about 5 minutes before I had to switch the channel. The Kids in the Hall movie was such a disaster, I don't think I ever finished it, either. For sure the worst I've seen in its entirety has to be Miami Vice. Ugh. Stinkaroo.
[Sometimes I just need to repost this, to get my wevtastic ass moving again…]
Echidne once wrote a great post in which she addresses a particular frustration of active feminists: “Feminists are somehow the unpaid cleaning crew … who is supposed to turn up after dark and fix the world so that the attractive nonfeminists can live in it comfortably. So that nobody else needs to spend time or money or their lives in trying to move the almost immovable rock that is public opinion on the so-called ‘women's issues’. So that it's only the feminists who can be painted with the caricature brush as mirthless and humorless, as too ugly to get laid, as man-hating fanatics.”
Her post reminds me of my lament in the same vein, about the American majority’s intractable lethargy toward their duty as a watchdog of government to ensure good governance. “Leaving a small group to carry the burden of caring doesn’t work—especially when the party in power has endeavored to marginalize them as hysterical lunatics at every turn and the impetus to stay disengaged makes accepting that characterization so very appealing, conveniently masking as it does any reminder that one’s own indifference is not just ignoble, but dangerous.”
And it struck me that both the sweeping scale of national politics and the subset of issue-specific progressive movements in America are both plagued by the same problem: too few people willing to do the hard work required to produce the results from which everyone wants to benefit. (Excepting, of course, the retrofuck jackholes who endeavor to drive us all several centuries backwards.) If only it were simply apathy, that would be, well, a pretty normal state of affairs. But it is beyond apathy—it is hostility toward activists, a resentment expressed in Echidne’s reference to “only the feminists who can be painted with the caricature brush as mirthless and humorless, as too ugly to get laid, as man-hating fanatics,” and in my reference to the marginalization of activists “as hysterical lunatics at every turn.”
Never in my lifetime has the word “activist” been as dirty a word as it is now, never has it been so inextricably linked to all manner of negative association—crazy, humorless, dangerous, traitorous. There’s always been a certain strain of activism regarded by some as laughable; anytime someone plops themselves in a treetop, there’s inevitably going to be giggles. Now, however, seemingly anyone who cares passionately about making a difference, holding the government accountable, ensuring fair elections, changing minds on social issues, arguing for fairness and equality, etc. is regarded as unhinged, and the quickest way to discredit someone is to call them an activist.
This is collective amnesia of our own history. America was a nation of action. The spirit of “can be done…the pioneer thing,” as Eddie Izzard would say. Go West, young man. Manifest destiny. Send the boys off to war; Rosie the Riveter and her sisters will keep the factories humming. Rural electrification?—no problem. By god, we’ll put a man on the bloody moon! And so we did.
And now, apparently, we’ve decided to take a little nap, after all our forebears’ hard work. Yawn. Thanks to their blood, sweat, and tears, we can fulfill our destiny as couch potatoes.
Especially since we all know that somebody will keep an eye on things. Surely someone will stay vigilant and make sure the train doesn’t go careening off the tracks, that we don’t lose our reproductive rights, our separation of church and state, our environment, our jobs, our right to vote, our very country. Yawn. What’s that? Cindy Sheehan’s on the teevee? Ohmigod, hahaha. What a wacko! She is such a loser. She, like, totally needs to get a life.
Get a life, you mourning mother of a fallen soldier. Get a life, you humorless feminists. Get a life, you parading queers yelling about marriage. Get a life, you affirmative action dopes. Get a life, you poor, lazy slobs on welfare. Get a life, you enabling progressives. Get a life, you national healthcare advocates. Get a life, Al Gore. Get a life, get a life, get a life.
So we are instructed by the La-Z-Boy jockeys. So is their resentment at those who refuse to quit stirring the pot made manifest. By telling the rest of us to get a life from the slack-jawed, numb-brained comfort of their comatose lives, by recasting inaction as life and activism as a pathetic, contemptible waste of time, they deflect the responsibility for any and every unhappiness, inequity, or injustice that befalls themselves or anyone else.
In the new American paradigm, pacifists are the enemy, and passivists are the real heroes, realizing their ultimate purpose as inert, impotent consumers, who contribute nothing but judgment on those who refuse such a fate. Get a life.
Even the phrase is rich with the notion of consumption. Get a life—surely the local Wal-Mart’s got several lovely models on offer. As if we don’t all have lives already. What we need is more people who are willing to use their lives for a purpose, to make those lives meaningful, to contribute to effecting the changes from which they want to benefit.
It is the definitive nod to what a lackluster, overindulged, ungrateful, and uninspired nation of people we have become that disdain for activism is not only accepted, but encouraged. When people marched to protest the war, the big news story was how they were holding up traffic, the inconsiderate bastards. Don’t they have anything better to do? Don’t they have lives?
Quaint, and silly, this notion of sacrifice, when juxtaposed against the ease of taking liberty and opportunity for granted. Only a fool would waste time trying to make his voice heard over the roar of complacency that echoes across the nation to its farthest corners. If we can have a war and tax cuts, surely too we can bask in our freedom with no obligatory exertion to protect it.
Having been given the chance to do nearly anything, the majority of us choose to do nothing.
But it can’t last forever. Believing one’s choices are guaranteed but leaving it up to others to protect the continued ability to make those choices—others who then become objects of ridicule for one’s amusement—is a recipe for disaster. Sooner than later, every American will be left with only one choice: keep on laughing at the activists, or become one to save themselves. And what a glorious dawn in America it will be when every chortling, finger-pointing, invective-hurling slacker who finds activism the epitome of pitiable profligacy stops counseling us to get a life, and instead, gets off his ass, and at long last takes a stand.
I am suffering from malaise.
I feel like poop. Tired. Uninspired. Apathetic. Useless. Overwhelmed with a crushing sense of futility. I am the sloth-like, slack-jawed, droopy-lidded embodiment of wev. Wev is my quintessence. Wev beats my heart, and wev runs my blood. I wev therefore I wev. All that's left for me now is leading the wevolution on the world wide wev—so wev your engines.
…to WorldNetDaily for the t0tally aw3zome coup of bringing on board wicked-hott respected journalist and erstwhile porn star/escort Rod Majors Matt Sanchez. I've never seen his movies, but from what I hear, he's got integrity literally dripping out his asshole.
Sanchez said, "I'm honored WordNetDaily.com has asked me to be a part of such a respectable organization."Sanchez might want to start off on the right foot by noting his new employer is called WorldNetDaily, not WordNetDaily. That's just good journamalizing.
Remember that knee-slapping hilarious slide show where Georgie looked all around the White House for WMD? My eyes are still-a-tearin' with all out giddiness from that one. Well, I think he could really boost his ratings if he came up with a new slide show where he scours the Pentagon offices looking for MRAPs, those life saving vehicles that would "support the troops."
AP:
The Pentagon will fall far short of its goal of sending 3,500 lifesaving armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year. Instead, officials expect to send about 1,500.Of course, who needs MRAPs when you have evangelical material to help you out?
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that while defense officials still believe contractors will build about 3,900 of the mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles by year's end, it will take longer for the military to fully equip them and ship them to Iraq.
Right-Wing Operatives Plot to Overthrow Maliki, Replace Him with Reliable Collaborator Allawi: "The powerful Republican lobbying group of Barbour Griffith & Rogers is plotting an effort to displace Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and supplant him with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi."
[More at TPM Muckraker.]
You know, I've got a great idea. Since the pro-war GOP nutwitz think that Bush is Teh Best Preznit Evah!, and since Bush himself believes that a free Iraq is within reach, and since the 22nd Amendment prohibits Bush from preznitting in America again, why don't we just send his lousy ass over there where he can preznit to his minions' hearts' content?
Meanwhile, with him out of the fricking way, maybe we can actually come up with an efficacious Iraq policy.
"To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to 'pull the rug out from under them,' is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to co-opt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither."
— Sully (who, by the way, is getting married in a few days; many happy returns from Shakesville!)
When, in 2001, President Bush declared he'd gazed into Russian President Vladimir Putin's eyes and "was able to get a sense of his soul," perhaps what he really saw that was so attractive was a fellow sexxxy cowboy:
When Vladimir Putin stripped down to the waist for the cameras, his muscled torso made headlines around the world.
And one week on, the ripples are still being felt in Russia, where he has become a sex symbol, the inspiration for men to start pumping iron, and the new darling of the gay lobby.
Well-known as a downhill skier and black belt in judo, he has appeared on national television driving a truck, operating a train, sailing on a submarine and co-piloting a fighter jet.Who knew the two heads of the erstwhile Cold War poles had so much in common? Beady eyes, contempt for democracy, delusions of dictatorship, and prancing about like wankers in silly get-ups. Two peas in a pod, I tells ya!
I'm on my annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario, where I will be seeing five plays in four days. This, along with my trip to the William Inge Festival each April, is how I spend most of my vacation time. It's not really a surprise; in my other life, when I'm not crunching numbers for the school district in Miami, I am a recovering theatre teacher and playwright.
I've seen three productions so far; My One and Only, A Delicate Balance, and The Merchant of Venice, and I've jotted down a few thoughts about them. As saying goes: Read on, Macduff.
My One and Only: Sheer Joy
The Stratford Festival started out as a three-play bill of Shakespeare plays under a tent on the banks of the Avon River in the small town 60 miles (100 km) west of Toronto in 1953. Since then it has grown to an eight-month event that includes standard musicals like Oklahoma!, avant-garde experimental pieces (La Guerre, Yes Sir!), British 18th century and Restoration comedies (The School for Scandal and The London Merchant), French farce (Moliere's Tartuffe) and modern classics like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. It's entirely possible to spend a week at Stratford and not see something written by Shakespeare.
The reasons are simple: economics. There are a lot of people who love theatre, but they also like seeing something beyond what the Bard wrote, and the festival recognized this early on. (My first trip to Stratford in 1970 included only one Shakespearean play out of three.) And the people who run the festival also know that their audience includes a lot of people, usually the elderly, who come from Ohio, New York, and as far away as Chicago for the weekend and they want to see something that will gladden their hearts (if not their pacemakers) with reminders of theatre from their own time period done with polish and energy by attractive and brilliant young dancers and singers. Something like A Delicate Balance (see below) can only go so far.
My One and Only certainly fills the bill. It is nothing but pure joy and confection, a jewel box of Gershwin songs put together in juke box fashion -- a trend among modern musicals (vide Mama Mia! and Jersey Boys) wrapped around a simple plot of boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-marries-girl with tons of toe-tapping (literally) thrown in. Tommy Tune, who created this piece in 1983, knew the heart and soul of this kind of theatre, and it works like a charm at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, a restored movie palace from the 1920's. Laird Mackintosh and Cynthia Dale are perfect as the two lovers destined to be each other's one and only, and the rest of the supporting cast is as perfect as a Busby Berkeley chorus line. And if it takes this kind of show to make the money so that the festival can undertake the plays that draw a smaller crowd but advance the art form, then so be it; let the gaffers and gammers nibble on the sweets while those of us with more adventurous tastes check out the boys in leather in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II in the Studio Theatre.
Next year, the artistic directorship will pass from the capable hands of Richard Monette, who has guided the festival since 1994 into a shared directorship that includes Des McAnuff, who directed, among other things, Jersey Boys on Broadway. The festival also plans to restore its old name, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and include more of the Bard's plays, including Hamlet. But they're also planning productions of The Music Man and Cabaret. The more things change...
A Delicate Balance: On the Edge
There are two rules in the WASP culture: 1. Never do anything that would embarrass the family, and 2. Have another drink. Anything that disturbs the delicate balance of going to the club, having lunch with the girls, the cocktail hour with polite conversation, or trips to the City must be dealt with by ignoring the problem, sweeping it under the rug, and not talking about it. We must go on; is your martini dry enough, dear?
As a product of the upper middle class culture that includes prep schools, summer homes, the Ivy League, and the country club, seeing the Stratford production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance hit home for me and my parents. At the first intermission we looked at each other and said, "Remind you of anyone we know?"
The comfortable lives of Tobias and Agnes in their comfortable home in Darien or Greenwich or Winnetka or Perrysburg have only a few minor disturbances; Agnes's alcoholic sister Claire is living with them, and the more she drinks the more she serves as the truth-teller, the Fool to King Lear. Their daughter Julia is returning home to the safe haven of her room after her fourth marriage has failed, but this is nothing new; children like this must return to the nest because they never grow up. All is well, sort of.
But into this come Harry and Edna, dear friends of Tobias and Agnes, who are driven out of the their home by a nameless terror. As they sat in their living room enjoying their evening drink they were both suddenly seized with this overwhelming fear, so they seek refuge with Tobias and Agnes, moving in without asking and in the process bringing along the pathogen of this terror with them, passing it off to each one in turn until everyone has faced it, dealt with it in their own way, and -- true to the culture -- subsumed it with booze.
If the only play you know by Mr. Albee is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, then this play may seem like a kinder, gentler version of the same idea. Yet in spite of the fact that there is far less violence and far less outward brutality, in its own way this play cuts far deeper and with far more surgical precision than the bludgeon of the first play. And in this play the characters give you the chance to not just identify with them -- as seemingly the audience did; as I was leaving the theatre I overheard one other audience member say to her companion, "They're just like us except not as mean" -- you get to know them and care about them, and this is done not through long speeches of exposition but by their little tics and quirks that reveal so much in so many small ways.
I must admit that I have a soft spot for plays like this and emphasis of character interaction over the melodramas of action and emotional extremism. It is far more revealing that someone deals with a crisis by making minute adjustments to the throw pillows and knick-knacks on the coffee table than it is by someone pulling a gun, and sometimes a single word or a phrase can do more than anything to drive home a point that terrifies the audience than all the heroes suffering a heart attack and tumbling to the bottom of the stairs.
The cast includes Martha Henry as Agnes; Ms. Henry has been a part of the Stratford experience in some form or another since 1962, and here she is the perfect hostess. David Fox, taking the place of the late William Hutt, has all the right moves as Tobias, the genial patriarch/bartender, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Poppy Bush. The role of Harry is played by James Blendick, who often plays character roles, but here he brings a touch of nuance and preppie charm to the role of the gentle but imposing friend. Fiona Reid plays Claire the truth-teller without a hint of malice or stereotyping, and Michelle Giroux as Julia, the wounded child, touched me deeply because I know her and have been in her place at least once in my life. But then, in this play, as in all good plays, we will all find someone who reminds us of us.
The Merchant of Venice: The Cost of Doing Business
One of the more intriguing characters that William Shakespeare used in his canon is that of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice. Drawing from a stock character -- or more correctly, a caricature -- of the stereotypical Jew of Elizabethan times, Shakespeare embellished him with the dimensions of humanity that makes it hard to decide if Shylock is the villain, demanding his literal pound of flesh in payment of a forfeited loan, or the victim of cruel antisemitism and driven to his actions in revenge for the treatment he's received at the hands of the Christians who spit on him as they take their loans from him. What makes it all the more intriguing is that over the centuries our view of Shylock and his portrayal in the play has changed because of outside circumstances and enlightenment on the part of the audience. Treating Shylock and his faith as "alien" in Venice -- the city he calls as much home as any of the other characters -- paints him as the perpetual outsider, and his odd religion is unwelcome, condemned and feared by the Christians, a practice that continues to this day, if not so much against the Jews as it is against, say, perhaps the Muslims.
To be fair, there's no lack of stereotyping by Shakespeare of other ethnic cultures and nationalities in the play. He pokes fun at the French, the Germans, the Scottish, the Arabs, and even the English, but he does them in comic relief as Portia reviews her choices of the men who have come to ask for her hand in marriage. (And Shakespeare has no problem in stereotyping women, either, even as he creates one of the more independent women in his repertoire in Portia, but the only way she can get ahead in a man's world is by pretending to be one.) But the portrait of Shylock is the only one where Shakespeare not only uses the stereotypes of the time, he also gives us the view of the world through the eyes of Shylock and lets us see how he is treated, and lets him explain why he feels compelled to strike back at his tormentors....if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
Shakespeare is rare among playwrights of his time in that he allows his protagonist to explain his reasons for his motivations; certainly he does not give equal time to Iago in Othello as to why he "hates the Moor;" when given the chance to justify his actions at the end of the play, Iago proclaims his perpetual silence. But Shylock appeals to the human frailties and failings by raising up the Jew out of the "subhuman" category to which he's been subjected, and demanding that his persecutors see him as just as human as they are is certainly an element that makes him more than just a stereotype. While it may not engender sympathy for him -- he is as unlikeable a character as you will meet regardless of his faith -- it does give him the dimensions that make him worth paying attention to.
The production here at Stratford stars Graham Greene as Shylock. You might remember Mr. Greene from his role as Kicking Bird in Dances with Wolves and other roles. Here he portrays Shylock as a Wall Street businessman, foregoing the stereotypical costume of the yarmulke, beard, and prayer shawl as is often seen in productions of the play. He is making a business deal here with Antonio, the eponymous merchant of the play, and when the loan can't be paid, he demands his payment without religious fervor but cold and hard demand, lacking, as Portia notes in her famous monologue (which is read, oddly, as a legal brief), "the quality of mercy." When Shylock is defeated by his own demands for the exact rule of law -- a lesson not to be lost on certain political parties -- he accepts the defeat and the punishment, not to mention the hypocrisy of the Christians who show the same lack of mercy in demanding that he convert -- with shrug and a chuckle as if the whole episode is the risk you take when you do business with people in Venice.
The rest of the cast was admirable, including Severn Thompson, who played Portia, and Raquel Duffy as Narissa, her friend and co-conspirator at the trial. The set, on the Stratford Festival thrust stage, was minimal and unintrusive, as it should be. The only thing that seemed out of place was the costuming, which seemed to combine Renaissance and modern times and made you wonder what exactly the designer was trying to say. If it was an attempt at making a link between that time and now, it was done in a way with voluminous skirts (one worn by Portia made me think it was inspired by Shelob the spider from The Lord of the Rings) and the men's clothes, with the exception of Shylock, looked like they had been bought at a Goth-type Renaissance Fair. Fortunately, in this case, it was the only discordant note in what was otherwise an interesting and well-directed production.
I still have yet to see An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde and The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. I'll report in on them later, but now it's time for intermission.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
St. Louis-based blogger supreme Dana Loesch of Mamalogues shares a delightful story of police attention where it was most decidedly not needed.
What other purpose could black people have in Soulard except to steal cars from affluent white yuppies, right? What the hell are black people doing out of North County? They’re stealing our cars!
Just a tiny slice o' life in the Gateway City. Y'all come back now real soon, y'hear?
(Cross-posted.)
Thanks to Violet, Ann, and Vanessa for giving more attention to LaVena Johnson's case.
Sign the petition to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to reopen the investigation into her death.
In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can't sell sex toys. That's right. Alabama is a vibrator-free state!I can't wait. This should be a particularly fun one for Clarence Thomas, who will no doubt dust off the Long Dong Silver collection to do some intensive research before the case.
Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. But the Alabama Legislature, in its infinite wisdom and in the spirit of protecting citizens from moral turpitude, a while back banned the sale of sex toys (or "marital aids" as some lawmakers coyly call them).
…Anyway, the Supremes have informed the state of Alabama that it must file an answering brief with the High Court, which is an indication that the case might be taken up in the next session.
"Most importantly, unlike animals fetuses reside in women's bodies, and being forced to carry a pregnancy to term imposes serious burdens on a mother's health and life prospects, which forcing a woman not to torture dogs does not."—LeMew, stating the obvious in his inimitable and much-appreciated way.
A betrayal of the public trust doesn't even begin to cover this:
Prosecutors say [Marcus Huffman] was on patrol March 18 when he met the woman after she was turned away from a club because she appeared intoxicated. Huffman is accused of offering her a ride, driving her to the substation and raping her.The 19-old-woman then went to a relative's home where she called 911 to report the rape. Among the three officers who responded was Officer Marcus Huffman.
Special Assistant Attorney General Erik Wallin said prosecutors have a video showing Huffman entering the substation with the woman, then leaving separately before the woman did.
In addition, prosecutors say they have recovered Huffman's semen from the woman's boxer shorts.
Do you collect anything?
I've never been much of a collector. I'm too random and a bit of a magpie, frankly. Very few physical things capture my attention for extended periods. I had the worst sticker-book in the fifth grade, because I just couldn't be arsed with it after awhile, even though I loved it at the start...
Every surface in our house is covered in tumbling piles of books, although we aren't technically "collectors" in the sense that you won't find hardly a valuable volume among them and our "collection" has no rhyme or reason. We're just book pack-rats, really.
The closest thing I have to a valuable collection by design is my music stuff, although a big part of what I'd collected was lost in a flood a few years back. And considering all the work and energy and money I'd put into finding and collecting it all, I found it surprisingly easy to let go without much regret at its ruin.
"I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history."—Your Idiot President, during a speech today at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in which he got so much history wrong, it hurt Maha Biggerbox's (sorry!) brain and provoked Steve to comment drolly, "It’s no secret that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but today makes clear that his speechwriters are as confused as Bush is." Also see: C&L.
[Redux. And again.]
Most US adults in the dark about world politics:
Two-thirds of US adults admit to being in the dark about political issues outside the United States, and only a third are well-versed in US politics, the results of a poll published Tuesday showed.Hmm. Anyone else thinking there might be some pretty significant overlap among the one-third who are "well-versed" in domestic and global politics? Gee.
One reason for the knowledge gap is lack of interest, according to the poll.It's pretty amazing how consistently somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the US population proves themselves to be useless fucking gobshites.
"Well over half (57 percent) say they do not like learning about political issues in other countries," and 32 percent expressed a lack of interest for homespun politics, the Harris Poll group said.
You are pretty darn strange. You're quirky and odd, and definitely not normal. But that's great--it makes you an interesting person. You aren't exactly as strange as they come, but congratulations on being quite unique!
How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace
Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering "freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.This shit is getting more insane as time goes on. We have men and women out in the desert who are dying for no reason whatsoever, and the best the Pentagon can do is get Stephen Baldwin's group to send over materials to try to help the occupied population embrace Jeebus and play apocalyptic video games. Freedom package, my arse.
What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.
Another splendiferous episode from the Conchords crew, with an extra delicious dose of Mellie goodness. And in excellent news, HBO has picked up the show for a second season. Woot! Judging by HBO's history, that season should start airing sometime around 2041 or so. Give or take a decade.
As always, a music snippet to whet your whistle is followed by the entire episode in three parts, below.
I finally picked up Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food last night, and I started reading before bed, expecting to get about 10 pages in before I conked out.
I read 174 pages. I have no idea what time it was when I finally forced myself to put it down, but it was no earlier than 2 a.m. And, although I probably could have lasted a bit longer, I deliberately stopped before the "What Made America Fat?" chapter, because I didn't want to be sleepy for that. (Also, frankly, I didn't want to have my enjoyment of the rest of it trashed if Glassner isn't as critical of the "obesity" hysteria as I hope he is -- though I have faith that he regards it with a satisfyingly critical eye, at least.)
Can I just TELL YOU how much I love Barry Glassner? I don't even know what to say about the first 174 pages of this book; I just want to quote them all. In lieu of that, I will encourage you as strongly as possible to buy it. Even if it all goes to hell in the fat chapter, the first 174 pages are worth the money.
What I love about Glassner's writing -- and I devoured The Culture of Fear just as quickly a few years ago, right after I saw him interviewed in Bowling for Columbine -- is that he really seems to prize reason above all else. That doesn't mean he's unemotional or narrowly focused; he believes, for instance, that it is reasonable to enjoy the sensual pleasure of eating. (And he's goddamned right.) It just means that his apparent agenda is to advance the cause of critical thinking, not any specific point of view. And that is why I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading him.
So Glassner cops to being a card-carrying member of the Slow Food movement and describes some meals he's had at ungodly expensive restaurants in utterly porny detail, but he never allows his preferences to give way to snobbery. He refuses to demonize processed food or fast food, choosing instead to take a thorough look at the many pros and cons of both, the real people (often highly trained chefs) who produce the recipes, and the real reasons why people choose them over fresh, whole foods. (Progressives who act as if everyone who makes that choice is an ignorant dupe of Big Food -- or even simply too poor to have other options -- take a well-deserved licking for their [okay, our] presumptions here.) He also acknowledges that those amazing, memorable meals he's had at fine restaurants have most often been when he was in the company of a powerful critic the staff spotted -- when he's dined at the same places as an average (albeit monied) Joe, the experience has been far less thrilling. Food can be a mindblowing art form, but even those willing and able pay top dollar don't necessarily have access to the highest expressions of it. Verrrry interesting.
Glassner also untangles a lot of food mysteries I've wondered about -- such as the meaning of labels like "organic," "fresh," and "natural" (not much, in every case) -- without ever taking a gotcha tone one way or another. He acknowledges that, personal health-wise, something marked "organic" is unlikely to be much better for you than its non-organic counterpart (in fact, the best alternative might come from a small farmer who does farm organically but can't afford to jump through the hoops required to earn an "organic" label), and that the organic movement is infected with a lot of "New Age blather and inferior food." BUT, he says, even huge suppliers like Organic Valley demonstrate "obvious sincerity about the social and ethical commitments of their company." An Organic Valley product may not be substantially better for you, but it's better for the farmers who are protected from price fluctuations, the people who live near those farms and aren't exposed to pesticides, and the animals who have much better living conditions before, um, being slaughtered. So there are plenty of good reasons to buy organic, even if they're not the reasons why most consumers actually make that choice.
"Natural" on the other hand, is pretty much a load of crap (which I was just thinking the other night while examining Al's Sprite can, which simultaneously claimed to contain "all natural flavors" and "no fruit juice"). One example is "natural" vanilla, which comes from the bean, and "artificial" vanillin, which comes from wood pulp. Both come from perfectly natural ingredients and are practically indistinguishable chemically, but only one is allowed the "natural" label. On the other hand, for a food to be labeled "natural," it only has to have 51 percent "natural" components, and the taste usually comes from the 49% of artificial crap anyway.
As for "fresh," in addition to finally explaining to me how we came to have supersweet fresh pineapple year-round, starting about 15 years ago (hardcore chilling and the addition of previously stored fruit juice to balance the flavor), Glassner makes a point that occasionally gets some play in the media but is really not said enough:If these sorts of wordplays and legalistic shenanigans [to earn a "fresh" label] seem absurd, so are the public's misconceptions that motivate food companies to sell their processed foods as fresh in the first place. Frozen and canned fruits and vegetables tend to be at least as nutritious as their fresh counterparts, but most food shoppers imagine otherwise. Consumers are largely unaware of contemporary techniques for flash-freezing and canning that retain micronutrients that are often lost during the packaging and shipping of fresh produce. The levels of many vitamins decrease dramatically in fresh fruits and vegetables within several days after they have been harvested and refrigerated.
And you know, I knew all that, but I still feel mildly guilty when I turn to my trusty bag of (organic!) frozen veggies for dinner or berries for a smoothie, instead of using the real thing. I buy frozen mostly because I inevitably waste fresh stuff; I'd love to be the kind of person who goes to the market every day and buys exactly what I need for dinner that night, but, um, I'm not. So even if I only buy one apple and one green pepper and one zucchini when I go to the store, I can be sure at least one of those will rot before I use it. (And don't get me started on heads of broccoli/cauliflower/lettuce or, the worst offenders, bunches of herbs. WHO THE HELL CAN USE 50 HANDFULS OF CILANTRO BEFORE IT GOES BAD? I'm not opening a Mexican restaurant here; I'm making six fucking tacos!) Frozen fruits and veggies allow me the freedom to cook what I feel like when I feel like it -- and to say "Screw it, let's go out" without feeling guilty about those peppers that are getting squishy in the crisper. But then, there's always that niggling guilt about how I'm copping out, compromising my culinary integrity and possibly my health -- and above all, being a Bad Fatty. I must earn my right to be unapologetically fat by eating only raw, fresh, organic foods!
That kind of thinking is what Glassner calls "The Gospel of Naught" -- the idea that we should all be eating as little as possible, with as little enjoyment (and as much effort) as possible, for optimum health. (He specifically goes after Walter Willett within the first few pages. Heh.) This leads to incredible misconceptions about what kind of nutrients human beings actually need to consume.For one of his studies, Paul Rozin [a psychologist at UPenn] presented the following scenario to a diverse sample of Americans: "Assume you are alone on a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick the food that you think would be best for your health." Seven choices were offered: corn, alfalfa sprouts, hot dogs, spinach, peaches, bananas, and milk chocolate.
If you guessed that hot dogs and milk chocolate are the closest of those foods to being nutritionally complete, you get a gold star. Fewer than 1 in 10 of Rozin's subjects picked one of those.In response to another set of questions, half of Rozin's respondents said that even very small amounts of salt, cholesterol and fat are unhealthy. More than one in four believed that a diet totally free of those substances is healthiest, when of course, they are crucial nutrients for human health. Without them, we could not survive.
Emphasis mine. The "Gospel of Naught" has trained us to "see pleasurable and healthy eating as mutually exclusive." And that's a problem for our health, on a lot of levels. Not only does it keep a shocking number of people from realizing that fat and salt are necessary parts of a healthy diet, but -- as Glassner explains on the very first page -- some studies have shown that enjoying your food makes you get more nutrients out of it. He talks about one study in which groups of Thai and Swedish women were given Thai food, Swedish food, and some other food "that was high in nutrients but consisted of a sticky, savorless paste." The Thai women absorbed more iron when eating the Thai food, which the Swedes thought was too spicy; the Swedes absorbed more iron when eating traditional Swedish food the Thai women found unappealingly bland; and neither group absorbed much iron when eating the pasty shit.
How weird is that? And what could it mean, if it were found to be true on a larger scale? Is the "French paradox" really a result of better portion control, or is it a result of the French enjoying their fucking food? Citing another study of Rozin's, Glassner writes:Among the findings: the French view food as pleasure, while Americans worry about food. Asked what words they associate with chocolate cake, the French chose "celebration" and the Americans chose "guilt." Asked about heavy cream, the French selected "whipped"; Americans chose "unhealthy."
I know which camp I'd rather be in.
All right, I could go on and on, but I don't want to wreck the whole book for you. Go buy it. Meanwhile, I'm off to read what Glassner has to say about fat. I expect there will be more gushing tomorrow.
Maybe PM Harper can see if he can borrow a copy of President Bush's Combating Protestors for Dummies:
A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.
Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.Ooh, poor widdle delicate pwesident! Is our legitimate, legal, and patrifuckingotic dissent sullying your beautiful wee mind? We're sowwy!
But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."
14 U.S. troops die in Iraq copter crash:
A Black Hawk helicopter went down Wednesday in northern Iraq, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard, the military said, the deadliest crash since January 2005.I'm just sick. Absolutely sick to my stomach.
...The military said initial indications showed the UH-60 helicopter experienced a mechanical problem and was not brought down by hostile fire, but the cause of the crash was still under investigation.
...Wednesday's deaths raised to at least 3,721 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
