The problem with letting bygones be bygones for war crimes is that some people who suffered might just rise to prominence and be unwilling to let things go:
Gen. Augusto Pinochet died this month without ever being held legally accountable for human rights abuses that occurred during his dictatorship. But his subordinates are now facing a new threat: President Michelle Bachelet is pushing to invalidate an amnesty law that for nearly 30 years has exempted them from prosecution on murder and torture charges.
General Pinochet originally decreed the amnesty in April 1978, four and a half years after he seized power in the coup that overthrew an elected president, Salvador Allende. According to official reports of government commissions, his dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of at least 3,200 people, the bulk of which occurred before the amnesty edict, and the torture of 28,000 more.
“This government, like other democratic governments before it, maintains that the amnesty was an illegitimate decision in its origins and content, form and foundation,” Ms. Bachelet’s chief of staff, Paulina Veloso, said in an interview at the presidential palace here. “Our conviction is that it should never have been applied at all, and certainly should never be used again.”
The modern free-market Chile that the wingnuts claim is Pinochet’s finest accomplishment is not quite ready to admit that all the killing, disappearing and torturing was worth it. After all, President Michele Bachelet was one of the people they tortured.
Accountability is a necessity for democracy to work. There are many ways to do it, from war crimes trials to truth and reconciliation commissions. But it must be done and it must be done publicly. If you sweep it under the rug it will fester and ultimately make a society very ill. Fair, open inquiry under the rule of law is required for a free society to move forward after a period of authoritarian, illegal rule.
I have to agree with Frank Rich that the Time Magazine person of the year was a little bit absurd — but then so is his column about it:
This editorial pratfall struck me, once a proud Time staff member, as a sign that my journalistic alma mater might go the way of the old Life… Let’s hope publishing history doesn’t repeat itself. So in Time’s defense, let me say that the more I reflected on its 2006 Person of the Year — or perhaps the more that Mylar cover reflected back at me — the more I realized that the magazine wasn’t as out of touch as it first seemed. Time made the right choice, albeit for the wrong reasons.
As our country sinks deeper into a quagmire — and even a conclusive Election Day repudiation of the war proves powerless to stop it — we the people, and that includes, yes, you, will seek out any escape hatch we can find. In the Iraq era, the dropout nostrums of choice are not the drugs and drug culture of Vietnam but the equally masturbatory and narcissistic (if less psychedelic) pastimes of the Internet. Why not spend hour upon hour passionately venting in the blogosphere, as Time suggests, about our “state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street”? Or an afternoon surfing from video to video on YouTube, where short-attention-span fluff is infinite? It’s more fun than the nightly news, which, as Laura Bush reminded us this month, has been criminally lax in unearthing all those “good things that are happening” in Baghdad.
So, just like George Will, Rich sees the blogosphere as masturbatory and narcissistic fluff —- why, it’s more fun than the nightly news! Apparently Rich and Will want us to believe that they spend their days and nights reading policy papers and holding seminars on the important issues of the day while the rest of us passionately vent about “our state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street” — which sounds suspiciously like a cocktail party in Manhattan or Georgetown.
I won’t go into why the political blogosphere is both entertaining and influential because if you read blogs you already know why. If it is escapism, it’s a form that creates community and makes people better informed and more actively involved in citizenship — so I’m hard pressed to see why this should be considered masturbatory and narcissistic.
Whatever. The blogosphere is something new and like most new things, much of the staid establishment fails to accept it until it’s already out of fashion. I’ve watched this phenonmenon my whole life. (I remember when the politicians started growing their sideburns in the 70’s. Oy.)
But as much as I’ve liked Rich over the years, I have to agree with Big Tent Democrat that when he gets a little too superior toward hoi polloi he needs to be reminded of this, by Bob Sommerby:
Why has a “liberal” like Rich been so tough on Gore through the years? Why did he invent Love Story in 1997? Throughout the course of Campaign 2000, why did he keep pretending that Bush and Gore were a perfectly-matched pair of bumblers? When Gore spoke out on Iraq in 2002, why did Rich attack him again (inventing his facts as he went)? And in his new column, just two weeks ago, why did he nit-pick those ludicrous complaints about Gore? For example, why did he pretend—in that pathetic example—that Gore “waffled” on creationism in 1999? For the most part, readers have no way to evaluate such claims. Why does Rich just keep making them up?
Rich was one of the pathologically unserious who treated the 2000 election as if it were a seventh grade girls slumber party. Considering the consequences, a little humility is in order.
Ho Ho Ho! I thought I’d dig out an old holiday chestnut for your Christmas creel this week. The Lion in Winter is a brainy, brash medieval talkfest that may disappoint the Society for Creative Anachronism types for its paucity of swordplay, but delight those who prefer a bit of spirited wordplay. A boisterous Peter O’Toole plays England’s Henry II like a true Christmas ham, and along with his acid-tongued Queen Eleanor (Katherine Hepburn, in an Oscar-winning performance) proceeds to (verbally) carve the family up for holiday dinner. O’Toole and Hepburn are crackling good in all their scenes together, gleefully tearing into each other like Edward Albee’s George and Martha transplanted into a drafty 12th century English castle. Henry, who has been holding his queen under house arrest for some time, has precipitated a family reunion by letting Eleanor “out” for a Christmas furlough. The “boys” are home for the holidays too, and they are not exactly “My Three Sons”! Led by the devious Richard the Lionhearted, (Anthony Hopkins) the trio of siblings argue, intrigue and swap inner-family alliances several times before the yams are even done (politics have not really changed much in 900 years). Look for a very young Timothy Dalton as Phillip of France, who has some nasty tricks up his Christmas stocking as well. Screenwriter James Goldman (“Robin And Marian”) delivers a script chock-a-block with many a well-turned phrase and dead-aimed barb. It is not too difficult to see how Hepburn walked away with her 1968 statue, spouting scenery-chewing one liners like “Well now, what SHALL we hang first-the holly…or each other?” Fill your grail with nog and let the yuletide backstabbing begin!
I enjoy re-screening It’s A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street or Christmas Story as much as the next guy, but if you feel you have finally reached your lifetime quota… here’s some less traditional alternatives: Bad Santa , The Ref, Diner, The Godfather (Okay, that last one is a bit of a stretch-but remember Duvall with an armload of Christmas gifts? “Get in the car, consigliori. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.” After all, isn’t that what the holidays are really all about-spending time with The Family?).
And hey-have yourself a merry little Ramakwanzakah!
We should be very careful when criticizing the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration remarks made by Republican Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia. Sometimes it becomes necessary to defer to the sage wisdom of our elected officials. Goode (rhymes with “screwed” as Interrobang notes), no doubt recalls clear examples in history where immigrants flooded America, “swamped” the resources (as he puts it), took over all civil jurisdictions, and then manipulated the legislative process to favor their own kind and color. By the time this ugly cycle was complete, the original domestic structures of culture, power, worship, government, and tradition had been superseded by the superior values proclaimed by the immigrating people. And remember, Goode is taking the long view when he says, “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies.” When he says that, he is acknowledging that cultural eradication can be a gradual process occurring over decades, even hundreds of years. As a pre-emptive visionary, he’s looking out for everyone’s best interest, understanding that immigrants can infiltrate and take over.
“We have great reason to believe you intend to drive us away, and settle the country; or else, why do you come to fight in the land that God has given us?” … “Why don’t you and the French fight in the old country, and on the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land? This makes everybody believe you want to take the land from us by force, and settle it.”
The author who reported the above quotes also described how the immigrants elbowed their way into the neighborhood, basically shitting on the people who were already there:
White settlers and traders aggressively pushed into that region and prevented accommodation between the British and the Ohio Indians. These “Frontier People” sought not accommodation with the Ohio Indians but rather their removal. Compromise did not enter their thoughts, and magnanimity never governed their actions. Respecting personal freedom more than law and advocating their right to take unused land rather than to await negotiated settlements with trans-Appalachian Indians, these frontier people moved relentlessly into the Ohio Valley. By 1774, approximately fifty thousand whites lived on the trans-Appalachian frontier, and the British army could not control them. By that time, the British no longer remained the principal enemy of the Ohio Indians. Instead it was the relentless westward-moving Americans.
The Indians fought for a while, hoping to deter the unfettered waves of immigration. Eventually, though, the indigenous Indians thought it best to try to accommodate the immigrants. In 1786, the United Indian Nations sent a message to Congress. Author and professor Ralph Young writes about this in his new book called Dissent in America:
As Americans continued to encroach upon Indian lands, the native people decided to take a page out of the newborn republic’s history book. The only hope to resist American expansion was for the Indian nations to unite, just as the 13 states had united, and so, in 1786, representatives of the Shawnee, Delaware, Huron, Cherokee, Wabash, Chippewa, Ottawa, Pottawatomie, and Miami formed the United Indian Nations. They issued a message to the U.S. Congress in which they insisted that the Ohio River remain the boundary between the United States and Indian territory and that any further agreements, treaties, or sales of land had to have the unanimous consent of the United Indian Nations.
Protest To The United States Congress, 1786 SPEECH AT THE CONFEDERATE COUNCIL, NOVEMBER 28 AND DECEMBER 18, 1786 [Excerpt] … We are still of the same opinion as to the means which may tend to reconcile us to each other; and we are sorry to find, although we had the best thoughts in our minds, during the before-mentioned period, mischief has, nevertheless, happened between you and us. We are still anxious of putting our plan of accommodation into execution, and we shall briefly inform you of the means that seem most probable to us of effecting a firm and lasting peace and reconciliation: the first step towards which should, in our opinion, be that all treaties carried on with the United States, on our parts, should be with the general voice of the whole confederacy, and carried on in the most open manner, without any restraint on either side; and especially as landed matters are often the subject of our councils with you, a matter of the greatest importance and of general concern to us, in this case we hold it indispensably necessary that any cession of our lands should be made in the most public manner, and by the united voice of the confederacy; holding all partial treaties as void and of no effect.
Proving that cultural erosion can result from being “weak on immigration,” Professor Young documented another Indian message, this one delivered twenty-three years later:
In 1809, while Tecumseh was undertaking his diplomatic mission, William Henry Harrison, the Governor of the Indiana Territory, negotiated a treaty with several of the Ohio tribes to purchase three million acres of land in southern Indiana. Outraged, Tecumseh wrote a letter to Harrison in which he vehemently protested this purchase, which had not been unanimously endorsed by the United Indian Nations.
LETTER TO GOVERNOR WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 1810
“The being within, communing with past ages, tells me that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent; that it then all belonged to red man, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but always encroaching. The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers who want all, and will not do with less.”
See, the immigrants are taking over. And pretty soon, the only political representation for the superseded culture comes from fringe outcasts whose voices never figure prominently in political outcomes. In 1830, US Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey gave a speech in protest of the Indian Removal Bill, which was written to force those who got here first from their native lands, to be replaced on the same land by the immigrants:
Our ancestors found these people, far removed from the commotions of Europe, exercising all the rights, and enjoying the privileges, of free and independent sovereigns of this new world. They were not a wild and lawless horde of banditti, but lived under the restraints of government, patriarchal in its character, and energetic in its influence. They had chiefs, head men, and councils. The white men, the author of all their wrongs, approached them as friends — they extended the olive branch; and being then a feeble colony and at the mercy of the native tenants of the soil, by presents and profession, propitiated their good will. The Indian yielded a slow, but substantial confidence; granted to the colonists an abiding place; and suffered them to grow up to man’s estate beside him. He never raised claim of elder title; as white man’s wants increased, he opened the hand of his bounty wider and wider. By and by, conditions are changed. His people melt away; his lands are constantly coveted; millions after millions are ceded. The Indian bears it all meekly; he complains, indeed, as well, but suffers on; and now he finds that his neighbor, whom his kindness had nourished, has spread an adverse title over the last remains of his patrimony, barely adequate to his wants, and turns upon him and says, “away we cannot endure you so near us! These forests and rivers, these groves of your fathers, these firesides and hunting grounds, are ours by the right of power, and the force of numbers.” Sir, let every treaty be blotted from our records, and in the name of truth and justice, I ask, who is the injured, and who is the aggressor?
Young elaborated on the Indian Removal Bill:
Although Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen strongly opposed Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Bill that stipulated sending the Cherokee from their native Georgia to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), the bill passed both houses of Congress in 1830. The Cherokee themselves were not silent in standing up for their rights and made a strong effort first to challenge the law and then to forestall enforcement of it. Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and in Worcestor v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in the Cherokee’s favor. Unfortunately, a contingent of Cherokee, without the authorization of the Cherokee nation, met with representative of the U.S. Government at New Echota, Georgia, and signed a removal treaty. Once the Senate ratified the Treaty Of New Echota, President Jackson had the authority he needed to force the removal. … [The Cherokee were ] forced … at bayonette point from their lands in Georgia and relocated to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. It has been estimated that as many as 15,000 of the 60,000 Indians died on the “Trail of Tears.”
Give immigrants an inch and they’ll take a country. Can you blame Representative Goode for wanting to forestall his own removal to a reservation in Oklahoma, or somewhere else in the interior of the country? The man has vision.
Here’s another one of those creepy articles about religious zealots who are trying to blow up the world and bring on the bridegroom. Fine, whatever. There have always been end-of-the-worlders around.
But really, how do these nuts get to be so involved in the highest reaches of the US Government? (From last summer):
As I reported for the Nation in my most recent article, “The Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism,” the White House has convened a series of meetings over the past few months with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel’s expansionist policies is “a biblical imperative.” CUFI’s Washington lobbyist, David Brog, told me that during the meetings, CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.
The White House instructed Brog not to reveal the names of officials he met with, Brog said.
Brog, the former chief-of-staff to Arlen Specter, is now the first full-time lobbyist for the Christian Zionism movement.
Chief of staff to token Pro-choice Republican Arlen Specter? It was bad enough that the Republicans sell their souls to big business, but they also appear to be willing to take money from total nutballs who want to end the world. (It’s entirely possible, of course, that he agrees wholeheartedly with the agenda — but he’s still a paid lobbyist.)
As we watch a new naval carrier group steam toward Iran in order to “send a message” you have to wonder whether these people might just be speaking in the ever more desperate George W. Bush’s ear.
“My first priority is my faith in God, then my family, and then my country. I share my faith because it describes who I am,” Gen. Catton says in the video. “You have many men and women who are seeking God’s council and wisdom as we advise the Chairman and the Secretary of Defense. Hallelujah.”
So the generals have done the big el-foldo and are going along with the McCain escalation plan. (I’m sure we’ll be hearing from these profiles in courage when they whisper in the ears of the media that they were only following orders.)
K-Drum says what I think a lot of us are reluctantly thinking:
Still, honesty compels me to say that I’m glad this is going to happen. I know this makes me a bad person with no concern for human life etc. etc. (feel free to expand on this sentiment in comments), but at some point we have to come to a conclusion on this stuff. Conservatives long ago convinced themselves against all evidence that we could have won in Vietnam if we’d only added more troops or used more napalm or nuked Hanoi or whatever, and they’re going to do the same thing in Iraq unless we allow them to play this out the way they want. If they don’t get to play the game their way, they’ll spend the next couple of decades trying to persuade the American public that there was nothing wrong with the idea of invading Iraq at all. We just never put the necessary resources into it.
Well, screw that. There’s nothing we can do to stop them anyway, so give ’em the resources they want. Let ’em fight the war the way they want. If it works — and after all, stranger things have happened — then I’ll eat some crow. But if it doesn’t, there’s a chance that the country will actually learn something from this.
I wish it were otherwise. But it isn’t.
There is no chance this is going to work, so I do not hold out even the smallest hope that this could be worthwhile in literal terms. It is purely to save face for George Bush. The American involvement in this war is over — they’re just delaying the inevitable until he can crawl back to Crawford and dump the whole disater in the next guy’s lap.
As for the long term, it doesn’t matter how spectacularly they fail, they will never admit it. We would have won “if only” no matter what actually happens. If only we’d put in more troops earlier, or more troops now, or reinstituted the draft or dropped some daisy cutters or whatever. These people live in a fantasy world in which they are always right but others are continuously conspiring to rob them of whatever they really need to prove it. In the long run, they will insist that the war could have been won if only the wimps hadn’t lost their nerve. And they will persuade a fair number of people that this was true — Americans don’t like losers and don’t like to think of themselves as losers. The paranoid strain will be happy to re-argue, re-litigate and re-write history down the road to say that America was betrayed from within. It’s what they do.
There is some short term political gains to be had, however sick it is to think in these terms. In the long run they will create their own myth but in the short term, they are going to have to deal with the reality that is going to continue to appear on people’s televisions every night. And that will rebound to St. John McCain and any other Republicans who jump on this bandwagon as it hurls over the cliff.
This is McCain’s plan. He’s been clamouring for more troops for a long time and he specifically says today that 20,000 to 35,000 will do the trick. He’s now going to have to get into those John Kerry style explanations whenever it comes up (“I was for more troops before others were for more troops and it would have worked if only they’d done it earlier but I thought that it was worth sending in more anyway and in fact we need more troops even now.”) There’s no pithy sound bite to explain why he still thought sending in more troops after the war was already lost would be a good idea.
So, there’s a very, very thin silver lining. Other than that, this is a disastrous failure on top of a disastrous failure and the military, which took great pride in learning the lessons of Vietnam, is once again playing the part of political pawn. Every American who dies from this point forward, dies for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s vanity.
Everyone’s been following the saga of Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia, I’m sure. He and Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo are clinging to one another on the fainting couch, wringing their little hankies and whimpering over the prospects of the brownskinned hordes streaming into the country and ruining our fabulous “culture.”
TPM Muckraker has been stalking Republicans all day trying to get them to say whether they support Goode’s comments. None seem to be available. But the intrepid Terry Jeffries of Human Events Magazine did share the GOP talking points on today’s Situation Room:
JEFFREY: I’m someone who lived in the Muslim world. Twenty years ago I lived in Cairo, Egypt, studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, had Muslim roommates. I believe Cairo may be the largest Muslim city in the world. It is a city that is very peaceful and not much crime there, a great place. I know that Muslims can be good neighbors. I know they can be good neighbors and Americans here.
So far so good. Very decent of him. But wait…
JEFFREY:I do think under Virgil Goode’s concern, there is something Americans should think about. America is a culture I think is basically rooted in the Judeo-Christian civilization of the West. Egypt is a country that is rooted in the civilization of Islam. I think history has shown where you have countries that are divided between those two civilizations it causes friction we don’t want to have in the United States and I think that’s a legitimate concern for immigration policy.
BLITZER: You think we should block Muslims from coming into this country?
JEFFREY: I think we need to have a immigration policy to make sure the immigrants we bring in are assimilated into our culture and become fully Americans.
And I think quite frankly right now we have a situation where we’ve had too many immigrants come in legally and illegally and the at the same time the engines of assimilation in the United States have been broken down by multiculturalism.
I think we need to solve that first… We have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion in this country that applies to everybody no matter what their religion is. This man has a right to put his hand on the Koran when he is sworn into Congress.
I do believe, however, that the United States has to worry about what this country is going to be like in the future and our immigration policies have to be calibrated in a way that remain one people and one nation. I do believe it’s a serious problem.
Jeffrey is basically saying that he doesn’t care who these people worship, he’s just doesn’t think they are “our kind.” This guy would agree. Good to know.
And to think his fearless leader worked so hard to hide this sentiment. (That was when he was running for office, of course.) But every once in a while his little white slip would show. Remember this?
There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.
Don’t you just love these color-blind Republicans? It sure is a better place since they eliminated racism in this country, isn’t it?
Republican House staff members who are losing their jobs in the aftermath of November’s loss of control are hoping Democrats will re-extend the hand of largesse to them next month.
As the old Congress wound down in a scramble of post-election activity, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to pay two months’ severance to staff members working on some committees and in House leadership offices. But her offer was scuttled — by Republican lawmakers, who complained they didn’t have the opportunity to study the proposal and look at costs.
The Senate already provides two months pay for displaced staff members. One of the affected House staffers said his comrades are mystified that a plan that would benefit employees of Republicans would be killed by Republicans: “We hope the Democrats revisit it.”
Well yeah. Most of us learned a long time ago that if you want to be treated decently by your employer, you always have to depend on the Democrats. Republicans just don’t give a damn about working people — especially the “help.” They’ll just tell you to sell your copy of “Atlas Shrugged” on e-bay or get one of those great new jobs that just opened up at the Swift meatpacking plants if you need money.
The last thing I want to do is re-open any self-inflicted wounds on the Christopher Hitchens front — but I just can’t help myself.
There is a long and interesting article in the October issue of New Yorker called “He Knew He Was Right” which is really worth reading. (Sadly, it’s not online.) Perhaps his ranting represent some overaching philosophy that is above my head, but frankly, I just find the man incoherent — if fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way.
He’s also such a monumental prick that I’m very hard pressed to care whether I slander him or not:
In the noisy front room of the North Beach restaurant where the friends had met, Hitchens made a toast: “To the Constitution of the United States, and confusion to its enemies!” The conversation was amiable and boozy; Hitchens might be said to care more for history than for individual humans, but he was in an easy mood, after a drive, in beautiful early-evening light, from Menlo Park. (He and Blue, a writer working on a novel, live with their thirteen-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C., but spend the summer in California, where her parents live.) During the ride, he had discussed with the Pakistani-born taxi-driver the virtues and vices of Benazir Bhutto, while surreptitiously using a bottle of Evian to put out a small but smoky fire that he had set in the ashtray.
And then the young doctor to his left made a passing but sympathetic remark about Howard Dean, the 2004 Presidential candidate; she said that he had been unfairly treated in the American media. Hitchens, in the clear, helpful voice one might use to give street directions, replied that Dean was “a raving nut bag,” and then corrected himself: “A raving, sinister, demagogic nut bag.” He said, “I and a few other people saw he should be destroyed.” He noted that, in 2003, Dean had given a speech at an abortion-rights gathering in which he recalled being visited, as a doctor, by a twelve-year-old who was pregnant by her father. (“You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea,” Dean said, to applause.) Dean appeared not to have referred the alleged rape to the police; he also, when pressed, admitted that the story was not, in all details, true. For Hitchens, this established that Dean was a “pathological liar.”
“All politicians lie!” the women said.
“He’s a doctor,” Hitchens said.
“But he’s a politician.”
“No, excuse me,” Hitchens said. His tone tightened, and his mouth shrunk like a sea anemone poked with a stick; the Hitchens face can, at moments of dialectical urgency, or when seen in an unkindly lit Fox News studio, transform from roguish to sour. (Hitchens’s friend Martin Amis, the novelist, has chided Hitchens for “doing that horrible thing with your lips.”) “Fine,” Hitchens said. “Now that I know that, to you, medical ethics are nothing, you’ve told me all I need to know. I’m not trying to persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I’m telling you why I disagree with you. That I do care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There’s nothing you wouldn’t make an excuse for.”
“That’s wrong!” they said.
“You know what? I wouldn’t want you on my side.” His tone was businesslike; the laughing protests died away. “I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I’m telling you what I think are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fine, he’s against the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re MoveOn.org. ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bush, he can say what he likes.’ Fuck off. You think a doctor can lie in front of an audience of women on a major question, and claim to have suppressed evidence on rape and incest and then to have said he made it up?”
“But Christopher . . .”
“Save it, sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what mine are, and that’s all the difference–I hope–in the world.”
How’d you like to face that over Christmas turkey?
I took very seriously the charge that I was lowering myself to his level by saying he was open to the idea that the holocaust was a hoax and I apologized for it. But I would have to have completely lost my standards, my humanity and my mind to have fallen as low as that asshole. I still regret the imprecision of my comment — but not quite as much as I did.
Update: To be clear: I’m not saying that Hitchens is a monumental prick because he thinks Dean is a liar. He’s a monumental prick because he says that Dean is a “raving, sinister, demagogic nut bag” who he and a “few other people” saw should be “destroyed.” (Who the fuck is he?)
He is likewise a monumental prick because he behaved like a complete asshole to the woman in the story:
“I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I’m telling you what I think are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fine, he’s against the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re MoveOn.org. ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bush, he can say what he likes.’ …. etc.
Whether or not Howard Dean told the story properly or lied about it seems somewhat trivial in light of Hitchens’ inappropriate vomitous verbal explosion. Particularly when he’s staking himself to the moral high ground by defending that paragon George W. Bush, the man who made hundreds of speeches in which he made sure that a majority of Americans believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11. I don’t remember Hitchens setting the record straight on that one.
I remember reading a review of “Titanic” that said the movie was unbelievable because young ladies of that era did not have premarital sex. It made me laugh. Now I see that a new study says that 95% of American adults have had prermarital sex, and I’m laughing again:
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
Contrary to every generation’s belief (mine most especially), they did not invent sex. Women who were born in the 40’s came into adulthood in the late 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, for crying out loud. I thought everyone knew that people were fucking like crazy during that era. (It wasn’t called the sexual revolution for nothing.)
But then people have always been doing it. A lot. It’s just that before modern feminism and the pill and the right to choose, there were “good girls” and “bad girls” and shotgun weddings and back alley abortions and lots and lots of guilt and shame about doing what humans have been programmed to do since we emerged from the primordial slime. You can’t talk people out of having sex. But you can allow society’s moral scolds and hypocritical busybodies to make everyone miserable about it.
I’m sure that today’s society has problems with sexual issues that are of concern. But going back to the days when society enshrined lying and guilt as a positive social value is hardly going to solve them.
is a brainy, brash medieval talkfest that may disappoint the Society for Creative Anachronism types for its paucity of swordplay, but delight those who prefer a bit of spirited wordplay. A boisterous Peter O’Toole plays England’s Henry II like a true Christmas ham, and along with his acid-tongued Queen Eleanor (Katherine Hepburn, in an Oscar-winning performance) proceeds to (verbally) carve the family up for holiday dinner. O’Toole and Hepburn are crackling good in all their scenes together, gleefully tearing into each other like Edward Albee’s George and Martha transplanted into a drafty 12th century English castle. Henry, who has been holding his queen under house arrest for some time, has precipitated a family reunion by letting Eleanor “out” for a Christmas furlough. The “boys” are home for the holidays too, and they are not exactly “My Three Sons”! Led by the devious Richard the Lionhearted, (Anthony Hopkins) the trio of siblings argue, intrigue and swap inner-family alliances several times before the yams are even done (politics have not really changed much in 900 years). Look for a very young Timothy Dalton as Phillip of France, who has some nasty tricks up his Christmas stocking as well. Screenwriter James Goldman (“Robin And Marian”) delivers a script chock-a-block with many a well-turned phrase and dead-aimed barb. It is not too difficult to see how Hepburn walked away with her 1968 statue, spouting scenery-chewing one liners like “Well now, what SHALL we hang first-the holly…or each other?” Fill your grail with nog and let the yuletide backstabbing begin!
, 
, 
, 
(Okay, that last one is a bit of a stretch-but remember Duvall with an armload of Christmas gifts? “Get in the car, consigliori. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.” After all, isn’t that what the holidays are really all about-spending time with The Family?).