It looks like the media are going to be dogging Democratic presidential contenders for “botched jokes” this cycle. They managed to run Kerry out of the race with his, so why not try it on Clinton?
Word to the wise, Dems. Remember that you are auditioning before those important arbiters of comedy, the famously witty members of the DC press corps. Recall how sharp they were at the funniest Washington event in recent memory and behave accordingly. (Hint: they don’t get jokes. Too complicated.)
I continue to be astounded by Dick Cheney’s bizarre public behavior. He did an interview with Richard Wolffe at Newsweek last week and it was just as weird as the one he did with Wolf Blitzer.
The whole thing is delusional, but there are a couple of points that really must be highlighted for their sheer incoherence and wrongheadedness. (Questions are in bold):
The president—and I think you also—have spoken about the possibility of regional war in case of American withdrawal, a chaos in Iraq, and I think the president referred to it as an epic battle between extremists. What’s the basis for thinking that it would be a broader war? What lies behind that kind of analysis in your mind?
Well, I think it’s a concern that the current level of sectarian violence—Shia on Sunni and Sunni on Shia violence would increase, and perhaps break out in other parts of the country. It’s pretty well concentrated right now in the Baghdad area.
There are a lot of other concerns, as well, with what would happen if we were to withdraw from Iraq and do what many in the Democratic Party want us to do. It clearly would have, I think, consequences on a regional basis in terms of the efforts that we’ve mounted not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This is a conflict that we’re involved in on a wide variety of fronts in that part of the world. And hundreds of thousands of people literally have signed on in that battle to take on the Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda types, in part because the United States is there, because we’re committed, because we provide the leadership, and because we’re working closely with people like President [Pervez] Musharraf in Pakistan, and [Hamid] Karzai in Afghanistan and so forth.
And a decision by the United States to withdraw from Iraq I think would have a direct negative impact on the efforts of all of those other folks who would say wait a minute, if the United States isn’t willing to complete the task in Iraq that they may have to reconsider whether or not they’re willing to put their lives on the line serving in the security forces in Afghanistan, for example, or taking important political positions in Afghanistan, or the work that the Saudis have done against the Al Qaeda inside the kingdom.
All of a sudden, the United States which is the bulwark of security in that part of world would I think no longer—could no longer be counted on by our friends and allies that have put so much into this struggle.
But would that encourage them to take a role in an Iraqi civil war? There’s this idea that regional powers would step in.
No, I think—I think when you look at Iraq, you have to look at Iraq in the broader context. And you cannot evaluate the consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq only in terms of Iraq. You’ve got to look at it in terms of what it means in other parts of the globe, really.
Remember what the strategy is here for Al Qaeda. Their strategy is that they can break our will. They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. They never have—but they believe firmly because they talk about it all the time—that they can, in fact, break the will of the American people and change our policies if they just kill enough Americans, or kill enough innocent civilians. And they cite Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 as evidence of that, and then they see the debate here in the United States over whether or not we’ve got the right policy in Iraq, whether or not we ought to stay committed there as evidence reinforcing their view that, in fact, the United States can be forced to withdraw if they simply stay the course that they’re on, that is to say the Al Qaeda and the terrorist extremists stay the course that they’re on.
So Iraq to some extent is a test of that basic fundamental proposition. Is their strategic view that we won’t complete the job correct? Or is our strategic view correct, that we can, in fact, organize people in that part of the world, as well as use our forces in order to achieve a significant victory and defeat those elements that, among other things launched an attack on the United States on 9/11 and killed 3,000 Americans.
You’ve made the case that a collapsed Iraq would become a terrorist haven. The president has also said that. Al Qaeda is essentially … Look at what happened to Afghanistan.
But Al Qaeda is essentially a new organization in Iraq, a Sunni organization and it has this element of foreign fighters. Isn’t there a reason to think that if there was full-blown civil war, the Shia would essentially beat them and neutralize that as being a hostile force as they take control of the country?
What’s the basis for that?
There are more Shia.
Well, let’s look at Afghanistan. In 1996, there were no Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That’s when [Osama] bin Laden moved in and found refuge there. A handful of Arabs, foreign fighters, if you will, subsequently opened up training camps, trained somewhere—estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000 terrorists in the late ’90s, developed a safe haven and a base of operations from which they blew up American embassies in East Africa, attacked the USS Cole, launched the planning and training for 9/11. That all took place in Afghanistan under circumstances that are similar to what you’ve just hypothesized about for Iraq.
That’s just a small sample of the non sequitors and muddled thinking throughout this interview. When asked about Iraq’s civil war he talks about al Qaeda. When the sectarian devision in Iraq are the subject he switches to Afghanistan in the 1980’s It’s all over the place, bizarre and disjointed.
Wolff asks why Cheney thinks there would be a broader war if the US withdrew. Cheney says that the civil war will expand to the rest of the country. That is a false issue, since it already exists in other parts of the country. This myth that everything is peaceful except for Baghdad is one of their favorite lies. (Doh.)His strange response to Wolff’s observation that the Shi’a would likely prevail over the Sunni due to the fact that they greatly outnumber them was frightening.
But it’s the next part, the childlike psycho-babble blather about how we will have let down all our friends and allies and shown Al Qaeda that we can be intimidated if we withdraw, that’s noteworthy. He has never wavered from day one from that idea and it’s clear that it is the sum total of his strategic view of dealing with Islamic extremism: prove that we aren’t cowards.
The only thing he seems to know about strategy is that if you “back down” your enemy will think you are soft and if you don’t “back down,” no matter what the circumstances, you will convince the enemy that they can’t defeat you. Basically, he really believes the trash talk that bin Laden’s been spewing all these years, — trash talk that would not sound odd coming from the mouth of a world wide wrestling star or a seventh grade bully.
He says, “Is their strategic view that we won’t complete the job correct?” Except it’s not a strategic view. He doesn’t seem to realize that bin Laden (and others) are practicing PR, not strategy. It’s sophomoric taunting that’s beneath any powerful nation to consider when making decisions about how to proceed. Militant Islamic extremism will not disappear because they finally have to admit that we are too tough to tangle with because we have not retreated from Iraq. They love having us in Iraq. They couldn’t be happier.
Indeed, if one were to actually look at what bin Laden and other Islamic militants’ real strategy is, I would have to think that bogging the US down in Iraq, empowering Iran and destabilizing the entire mid-east might have been a long term objective — only they likely never dreamed we would actually fulfill it in such short shrift and with so much enthusiasm.
Cheney goes on to say that our strategic view is that we can build a western democracy and that once it flourishes we will achieve our strategic pobjective as everyone holds hands and sings “This Land is Your land.” He is either lying about that or he has comoletely lost touch with what is actually happening. I suspect the former. The fact that they never listened to even one person with nation building expertise tells the tale. Indeed, until this war, they disdained the very concept.
No, I do not believe it. Their “strategy” is just what Bush and Cheney have always said it was — prove to the world that nobody can push the US of A around. Invade Iraq and show that we’re mad as hell and we won’t take it anymore. Then the terrorists will run for cover. That’s it. Strategery 101, just like on Saturday night Live and Junior’s college “Risk” days.
It’s stupid, it’s puerile it’s completely absurd. But that is all there is to the Bush administration’s War On Terror strategy. Nothing that happens on the ground matters. All that matters is that we are there and we aren’t leaving until Al Qaeda cries “Uncle.”
For those who are interested in knowing what Wolff was talking about when he said, “There’s this idea that regional powers would step in,” read this very interesting transcript of General William Odom’s prepared testimony last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here’s the conclusion:
Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others’ support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.
Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history
I would suggest that it is the greatest strategic disaster in our history because it wasn’t really a strategy at all. It was a simple-minded reading of a complicated problem based upon some psychological need among a handful of powerful men. And vice president Cheney is clearly still very powerful. He is out there making a spectacle of himself with this talk and nobody can stop him even though it’s terribly counter-productive to the current legislative and foreign policy challenges and the president’s standing with the nation at large. He is a dangerous and somewhat deranged man. But the problem is that the man at whose pleasure he serves is just as deluded as he is.
It is this kind of thing that makes me believe that they will provoke a war with Iran. It is their strategy to prove that the US is the biggest toughest bastard on the planet. Iraq isn’t getting that job done. Maybe doubling down will.
The Cincinnatti Beacon found that people are picking up the Joshua “Zelig” Sparling spitting story as proof of the terrible treatment of veterans. One is a Vietnam Vet who recovered memories of his own spitting incident back in the 70’s. (The Beacon also found that his story doesn’t exactly add up — as usual.)
Even more interesting is that the Beacon coincidentally shot some footage of Sparling standing with the Freepers. If there was spit lobbed across the wide chasm between the two opposing groups, it was an award winning projectile gob, which makes this passage by the New York Times reporter especially suspicious:
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.
As I posted earlier, the Washington Post had what appears to be a slightly more accurate report of the incident (no spitting observed) and for some reason they scrubbed the passage from later versions of the story.
Joseph Hughes of the blog Hughes for America was at the march and came up close and personal with Sparling. He reported in my comments:
As someone who was at the CODEPINK event – here’s my take on that and the march in general – and who saw Sparling up close and personal, I thought I’d weigh in. We were close to the front of the event because we were there early and my girlfriend wanted a good spot to take photos. Shortly after the event began, I noticed Sparling and his small group – himself, a woman wearing the same 82nd Airborne sweatshirt and another young man – push their way to the front. By the time they made their move, the crowd was packed pretty tight, so I don’t see how they could have made it so close (just to the left of the front) without some pushing.
When everyone would cheer a particular speaker, he first stood out by loudly booing. He would also give a thumbs down gesture to accompany those boos. One of the official speakers, a woman who formerly served in the armed forces, went over to him, and the two appeared to have a civil conversation. When a man who was taking pictures went over, Sparling appeared to be shouting in his face to move the camera. Later, when the female veteran spoke, she mentioned his service and our appreciation for it and there was a good round of applause. Nothing that would lead someone to characterize anyone as un-American.
I missed his impromptu speech because myself and my girlfriend were helping keep the CODEPINK protesters on the sidewalk as we marched to the full protest. That said, I sincerely doubt Sparling was treated with disrespect on our side of the street. (I didn’t notice anyone on his side of the street barring a few curious folks who appeared to be taking pictures of the counter-protesters.) The worst I saw anyone from our side do in response to a counter-protester was throw up a fist or peace sign. When someone shouted, it wasn’t profane. Now, on the other hand, Sparling’s Freeper friends across the street had spent the better part of an hour holding up ridiculous signs like “Anti-American peaceniks think sedition is patriotic” and “We gave peace a chance. We got 9/11”. Also, they hung an effigy of Jane Fonda.
These weren’t friendly people. They were people looking to provoke a response. That they got it in the form of spitting, based on everything I saw Saturday, seems laughable on its face.
Before I even noticed Sparling’s leg, I thought the kid was a right-wing plant in our group. I thought we were going to be marching, peacefully, and this kid would break a window or otherwise do something to make for an ugly scene, making what was actually a peaceful protest look anything but. It looked to me like he was taking great pains to stand out in what he was doing. For anyone to portray Sparling as an innocent actor in Saturday’s events while making the CODEPINK attendees out to be a rabid mob boggles the mind. Our group was 90 percent women, including children and grandmothers. Half of the guys there didn’t look like they could hurt a fly. I can safely say Sparling and his group showed up looking to start something, something that, from the looks of your citations, appears to be a pattern.
I will repeat myself here, but it’s important. I suspect that what’s at work here is reflexive, lazy MSM he said/she said reporting where it was important to show “the other side” of the story of a peaceful protest. As usual, this lazy and inaccurate form of reporting worked to the benefit of the right, who in this case used a young man who is a celebrity rightwing victim of numerous alleged lefty slurs to tell a mythic story. I expect this from Fox News. It’s a big problem when it’s the paper of record.
But there’s an even bigger problem. Dave Niewert and others have done a lot of writing over the past few years about rightwing eliminationist rhetoric and subterranean groups like militias and how their poison seeps into the mainstream. The mainstream media have failed to pick up on this pernicious social and political trend. Instead they are still mired in the stereotypes of 35 years ago, which we saw this week-end are pretty stooped and grey these days. They need to turn their attention to their right.
In this instance you had a budding rightwing operative who sat with the Vice President’s wife at the State of the Union address appearing with a group that hanged Jane Fonda in effigy in the middle of a peaceful protest march. The signs they held were violent, crude and purposefully provocative. Yet the mainstream media, in looking for some frisson of 60’s street violence, reports it as if the protesters are the provacateurs. They had the story and they completely missed it.
The fact is that the people who are challenging social norms and mainstream behavior are not coming from the left today — they are coming from the right. They are clever and well financed and they are being helped not just by their own rightwing media infrastructure — the allegedly liberal NY Times and Washington Post are also helping them with their knee-jerk assumptions and phony narratives.
Update: How surprising. The AP is quoting Sparling too. No mention of hanging Jane Fonda in effigy.
Update II: Pictures of Sparling (identified as a colonel) at the protest were also picked up by World Picture News. Who’s this guy’s press agent? John McCain should hire him.
First of all, let me make it clear why this is a big deal. Most of you know that “spitting on veterans” is a big time hot button. We have been lucky to see very little hostility toward the troops during this war and I have seen no evidence that it is happening now. I think I speak for the vast majority of Americans when I say that we do not blame the soldiers and marines for what is happening and harbor no ill will toward them. We hold the political leaders who sent them over to that meat grinder responsible as is our right and responsibility as citizens.
But even the real hostility that we saw back in the 60’s and 70’s didn’t actually feature people spitting on soldiers. It’s an urban legend that was debunked long ago.
But it’s a potent charge to this day and one that it’s hard to believe Joshua Sparling (and the NY Times) didn’t know would push buttons.
Here are a couple of interesting little factoids that readers have brought to my attention.
The Washington Postmentioned Sparling too in an earlier version of today’s story about the march. It’s been edited out of the current piece, but this intrepid blogger captured it:
Earlier in the day, a smaller rally was held at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue. About 3,000 people, many wearing pink or carrying pink signs, showed up for an antiwar protest sponsored by a women-run peace organization called CodePink.
Oriana Futrell, a Spokane, Wash., resident who said she has grown weary of going to the funerals of her friends’ husbands, carried a sign also urging the return of her husband, an Army lieutenant in Iraq.
Across the street, however, was a counter-protest, staged by the Washington chapter of the conservative organization FreeRepublic.com. Those protesters, who organizers said feared that the antiwar march would hurt the U.S. anti-terror efforts, yelled and sported signs, such as one that read, “Go to hell traitors. You dishonor our dead on hallowed ground.”
At least one veteran from the Iraq war tried to bridge the divide between the groups. Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, from Port Huron, Mich., who lost his right leg below the knee in an 2005 explosion in Ramadi, spoke to both groups.
Near the end of the CodePink rally, Sparling, a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital who used crutches to walk, went to the microphone and told the protesters that they are entitled to the right to demonstrate and must fight for what they believe in. But he reminded them that the situation is dire for many Iraqis and U.S. troops there believe that they are fighting to help provide a better option for the people of Iraq. He was rewarded with general applause, although a few feint boos could be heard.
When he finished, he walked across the street and spoke with the FreeRepublic group also.
Actually, according to witnesses in the comment section of the post below, it appears that Sparling was with the Freepers from the beginning.
I wonder why the Wapo eliminated this piece of the story? (I don’t have any dark suspicions. It was probably space or relevance or something. Still, it’s curious.)
Here, again, is how the NY Times reported the same incident. it’s been changed slightly from the earlier version I quoted below, but I can’t see how that changed the (misleading nature of) the story:
There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.
Capitol police made the antiwar protestors walk farther away from the counterprotesters.
“These are not Americans as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Sparling said.
Unfortunately, this is the version that will be googled whenever anyone looks up “antiwar+protestors+spitting.”
I have no idea what is behind all the problems with the public that Joshua Sparling seems to confront all the time. Certainly, you would think that if there’s a lot of this going on that it would be documented by someone other than this one young man. And I find it very suspicious that it wouldn’t be covered constantly in the right wing press, at least.
The salient fact here is that Sparling was allowed to address the anti-war protestors at the Code Pink rally and was treated respectfully and then went on to say that the very people who had allowed him to speak weren’t “Americans.” I do not know if the spitting incident is a lie, but I believe I am justifiably suspicious of his story under the circumstances.
What I do know is that the NY Times article was so badly reported and so misleading as to be a lie. By leaving out the fact that he spoke at an anti-war rally, it appeared as if he spoke at his own rally. And it made it sound as if the protestors walking by were provoking him, when, in fact, he’d been allowed to speak to them and was treated respectfully. It was the counter-protestors across the street — his friends the Freepers — who were the disruptive ones. The NY Times got it exactly backwards.
That they didn’t bother to even google Sparling’s name, where they would have found that he’s something of a rightwing celebrity for his tales of victimization at the hands of terrible lefties, is journalistic malpractice.
They need to correct this story. And they need to look into Sparling. I suspect he’s being used by a bunch of creepy Freepers and swiftboat professionals. The man gave his leg. He shouldn’t be exploited by these jerks on top of it.
And if he’s just making stuff up, the fact that he’s a wounded veteran does not excuse it.
Update: From one of the appearances Sparling’s dad made on Hannity and Colmes last year, this stands out:
COLMES: How did he get chosen? How did it come about that last night he was in the gallery? Were you with him last night at the State of the Union address?
SPARLING: Yes. As a matter of fact, I was sitting beside Vice President Cheney’s wife.
COLMES: Did you talk to her?
SPARLING: Yes, I did.
COLMES: What did you talk about?
SPARLING: She’s a very nice lady. And I can see, you know — very, very kind-hearted family.
HANNITY: Mike, you sent Joshua our best. Tell him he’s in our prayers. And we look forward to seeing you guys soon. Thank you very much. And we’re going to help you with that other problem, too, as you know, when the time comes, about the job.
SPARLING: Sean, Joshua says you still owe him that trip to New York. And he’s sorry he couldn’t be here tonight, and he loves you to death.
HANNITY: When he’s ready, he comes back up and we’re going to have a great time. I’m looking forward to having him up here, sir. Thank you.
Seems they have friends in very high places.
Update II: Apparently Sparling has also made appearances at Ollie North’s “Freedom Alliance” concerts. He’s a certified minor wingnut celebrity.
There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.
Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.
How awful. And it turns out that poor PFC Sparling has been treated terribly by these DFH’s time and time again. Michele Malkin reported on another awful incident back in December:
Lots of readers watched Fox & Friends this morning and e-mailed about the disgusting greeting card a wounded soldier received while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thanks to reader Shari for taking these cell phone camera shots of the card displayed by co-host Brian Kilmeade:
The card front, decorated with patriotic and holiday stamps, was deceptively innocuous. But take a look at what was inside:
Yes, that’s right. It says “P.S. DIE” in the lower right-hand corner.
According to Kilmeade, who visited Walter Reed on Friday, a US Army soldier named Joshua Sparling received the death wish while recovering from a gunshot wound he received in Ramadi, Iraq. It’s the only Christmas card he received. Fox & Friends is urging you to counter the hate by sending your thanks and good wishes to Sparling:
Joshua Sparling c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center 6900 Georgia Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20307-5001
Shameful!
Sean Hannity took up his case too and gave Sparling an iPod. (I wonder what neat loot he’ll get for being spit upon!)
He has become such a famous victim that he and his parents even went to the State of the Union address at the invitation of Dennis Hastert.
Some might find it odd that such terrible treatment would befall the same man — first he gets a terrible Christmas card (Christmas!) that tells him to “go die.” Then, he was spat upon by protestors — a myth of the 1960’s come to life right before our very eyes. What are the odds?
Luckily the New York Times, which obviously reported his spitting incident without even the most cursory google search on his name, is helping to perpetuate this story for a new generation. From now on, any search of “spitting on Iraq veterans” will turn up this incident to back up the inevitable future claims by wingnuts that they were mistreated by the dirty hippies of 2007. Good job NY Times. That’s why they call it the paper of record.
I wonder if they would consider doing a profile of poor put-upon Sparling. Surely, all these awful incidents should be compiled and also put in the paper of record. One poor 24 year old soldier appears to be bearing the brunt of the entire vicious hippie movement. Seems like there’s a story there.
We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass – no go.”
My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out.
Thank goodness. It’s hell out there for this veteran everywhere he goes.
Update II: Thanks to Julia for alerting me to this. Sparling has been in the news since 2005 when the army used him for PR purposes. Interesting.
It also seems that Sparling’s horrible Christmas card was actually sent by a white supremecist nutcase named Michael Crook. (Or at least he took credit for it.) (This was noted by Malkin at the time.)
Sparling appears to be some sort of US Army Zelig with ties to white supremecists who is becoming the poster boy for veterans who feel beseiged by dirty hippies.
One wonders if John O’Neill has taken this young fellow under his wing.
Richard Linklater entered the sci-fi arena in 2006 with his adaptation of the late Phillip K. Dick’s semi-autobiographical novel A Scanner Darkly(now on DVD). Set in a not-so-distant future L.A., the story injects themes of existential dilemma, drug-fueled paranoia and Orwellian government surveillance (hmm, that’s timely) into what is otherwise a fairly standard undercover-cop-who’s-gone-too-deep yarn. Keanu Reeves stars as a dazed and confused narc who has become helplessly addicted to the mind-altering drug that he has been assigned to help eradicate (“substance D”). Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Linklater alumni Rory Cochrane are his fellow D-heads who may not exactly be whom they appear to be on the surface. Adding to the mood of hallucinatory psychosis is Linklater’s controversial use of roto-scoping (as per his underrated Waking Life). The rotoscoping technique does present challenges to the actors; Downey, with his Chaplinesque knack for physical expression, pulls it off best, while the more inert performers like Reeves and Ryder are akin to oil paintings. Linklater’s script keeps fairly close to its source material-particularly in relation to the more cerebral elements (Linklater’s propensity for lots of talk and little action may be a turn-off for those expecting another Minority Report). Depending on what you bring with you, the film is a) a cautionary tale about addiction, b) a warning about encroaching technocracy, c) an indictment on the government’s “war” on drugs, d) a really cool flick to watch while stoned, e) the longest 99 minutes of your life or f) all of the above.
Speaking of the “war” on drugs-here’s a sleeper you may have missed. Grass is a unique, well-produced documentary dealing (er, pun intended) with the history of marijuana criminalization in the United States. Far from a dry history lesson, the film builds its own “counter-myth” of sorts, by exposing the hypocrisy of the government’s anti-marijuana propaganda machine over the years. It’s all there-from the laughable histrionics of the 1930’s Reefer Madness movie to the Reagan administrations sophomoric “Just Say No” campaign in the 1980’s. There is also a fascinating ongoing tally of all the tax money the various law-enforcement agencies have spent (wasted) attempting to eradicate marijuana usage from the days of Elliot Ness to the present. The filmmakers ladle some well-chosen period music over a wealth of ironic archive footage. Woody Harrelson (who has infamously lived through a series of herb-related legal problems, off-screen) narrates with winking bemusement. Whether you are for or against legalization, you should find this one quite informative and highly (er, sorry!) entertaining.
Glenn Greenwald writes one of his throughly satisfying lawyerly exposés of one of the most loathesome DC creatures of recent years, the hysterical anti-muslim, anti-arab racist, Martin Peretz. It’s long overdue.
But Glenn’s focus on Peretz’s anti-arab diatribes unfortunately gives short shrift to his more homegrown bigotry. He has a little problem with yer african americans too. He’s quite clever about it, but it’s very similar to the proudly colorblind wingnuts who extoll the virtues of “good” blacks like Condi and Colin while unleashing standard racist vitriol toward “bad” negroes:
… as Michael Kazin also rightly points out, Obama is an idiosyncratic African American, although Mike doesn’t use the word “idiosyncratic.”
In any case, he is not a four-flusher and hustler like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who also ran for president. But he is more than just not like these men. He is a formidable candidate because he is a formidable person. More than Mark Warner or Tom Vilsack. And why shouldn’t we at last have a black president? Given America’s history, that’s an honorable ambition for a party and for a country.
Why shouldn’t we have a black president, indeed? What a bold and broadminded epiphany. Why, they’re just like everybody else!
Or are they? He uses the word “idiosyncratic” to describe someone who isn’t, you know, unpleasantly “Afro-American” a term he uses unself-consciously in this post:
Does Ned Lamont really want Al Sharpton’s support? The reverend has lost just about all his fans in the Afro-American population, as anyone could tell by how he fared in the 2004 Democratic primary. I think he got fewer votes and fewer delegates than Kucinich, which is a great achievement. In any case, black Americans–having produced solid and achieving and aspiring politicians like Harold Ford Jr., Barack Obama and Deval Patrick (for all my carping at him)–have no reason to stick with Sharpton on anything. He has been a racist hooligan from the beginning of his career to, well, yesterday. What did he do yesterday? He accused Joe Lieberman of “race-baiting.”
Heavens!
Peretz does this over and over again when the issue is race. He cannot discuss the issue without contrasting what he considers to be good african-americans with “four-flushing hustlers” like Jackson and Sharpton. (He missed an opportunity to use the word “pimp”. Somebody send him a wingnut style-guide.)
It’s standard modern racism. They don’t just come out and say it. They don’t even know they are doing it. They really, truly do like some black people. The good ones. You know, the ones who don’t act …. black. And they have convinced themselves that today there is also a large silent majority of these “good” “afro-Americans” who also hate Jesse Jackson and who, in fact, believe exactly as Marty Peretz does. Which is why he isn’t a racist. He and teh African-Americans are brothers under their creamy, not too black, skins.
I’m a fan of young man Ford. He’s religious, he is not embarrassed that he’s for a strong defense, and he’s a friend of Al Gore–which means a lot to me. He is also more in touch with the sentiments of black constituents than either Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, in the new tradition of Barack Obama and Corey Booker, who also are very appealing to whites. This is the fresh black leadership in the Democratic Party, and a blessing they are.
Again with the good negroes and the bad negroes. This time, he also asserts that these “idiosyncratic” african americans are more appealing to whites than the bad negroes. No word on why. And how he knows that they are more appealing to the black constituency than jackson or Sharpton is also a mystery. I guess he found that out by hanging out in black churches and hip-hop clubs with Condi and Mike Bloomberg.
Of course, this “idiosyncracy” of Obama and these others has a down side. The rightwing talk sludge slingers are now saying he isn’t entitled to be considered “black” because he isn’t descended from African slaves. They are calling him a “halfrican” when they aren’t also tagging him as a muslim terrorist. (Don’t tell Peretz, his head will explode.)
I’m reminded of many recent conversations in which I’m lectured about how the Republicans are now the party of equality because Bush put Condi and Colin in the cabinet. (Of course, there have been blacks in the cabinet before, but no matter.) What always comes out is how these fine Republican African Americans don’t look and sound so much like those really black ones.
They all feel very proud of themselves and constantly pat themselves on the back for their new-found color-blindness. The mexicans and the arabs, on the other hand, are just a bunch of animals, but then everybody knows that.
In a bold new advance in technical awardology the annual Kippies were hosted this year on IM, by none other than the “godfather” of instant messages himself: Congressman Mark Foley. If you want to see history as it was made, read the transcript. Foley is very, shall we say….excited to be there.
*And I’m personally thrilled that my favorite columnist of all time, Richard Cohen, won this year’s Purple Teardrop With Clutched Pearls Cluster. Made me all verklempt.
Today’s anti-war rally in Washington brings to mind Ché Pasa’s comment from last week:
The idea that physical protest doesn’t matter or is ineffective is absurd on its face, and yet this idea is nearly endemic to much of high profile lefty blogistan, a matter of faith more than evidence. I’ve been in several set-to’s with blogish proprietors over the issue, most recently over the question of whether Cindy Sheehan’s protests are of any relevance or consequence, and shouldn’t she and her tactics be shunned by the “serious” left? What complete garbage, but she does have a tendency to embarrass the Democratic Powers That Be, and that’s her chief offense these days. But Cindy was down the street protesting last night with hundreds of others who marched and chanted and carried signs and –horrors — disrupted traffic at rush hour, making the tired old point that this war must be brought to an END, yawn. See, nobody likes her, so why doesn’t she just stay home? And all this marching and chanting and carrying signs has no appeal or effect any more, so we should all just stop it, hook in to the New Wired World, and zone out.
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. Back in the Old Days, it wasn’t really possible to hook in to the protest movement unless you were physically there in person. Now you can get a dose of protest vigor just by turning on your computer and visiting a site or two, where you’ll find excellent rants and virtual marches out the wahzoo.
There. Done. Protest complete. Off to work, school or whatever.
Last year I posted an excerpt about Paul Revere’s role in the revolutionary movement, a different ‘old days’ than what Ché Pasa was speaking of. In that piece, I suggested today’s community of blogs are similar to the local associations that comprised part of the revolutionary movement infrastructure. Note the blend of meetings and action in historian Fischer’s words:
The structure of Boston’s revolutionary movement, and Paul Revere’s place within it, were very different from recent secondary accounts. Many historians have suggested that this movement was a tightly organized, hierarchical organization, controlled by Samuel Adams and a few other dominant figures. These same interpretations commonly represent Revere as a minor figure who served his social superiors mainly as a messenger.
A very different pattern emerges from the following comparison of seven groups: the Masonic lodge that met at the Green Dragon Tavern; the Loyal Nine, which was the nucleus of the Sons of Liberty; the North Caucus that met at the Salutation Tavern; the Long Room Club in Dassett Alley; the Boston Committee of Correspondence; the men who are known to have participated in the Boston Tea Party; and Whig leaders on a Tory Enemies List.
A total of 255 men were in one or more of these seven groups. Nobody appeared on all seven lists, or even as many as six. Two men, and only two, were in five groups; they were Joseph Warren and Paul Revere, who were unique in the breadth of their associations.
Other multiple memberships were as follows. Five men (2.0%) appeared in four groups each … Seven men (2.7%) turned up on three lists … Twenty-seven individuals (10.6%) were on two lists … The great majority, 211 of 255 (82.7%), appeared only on a single list. Altogether, 94.1% were in only one or two groups.
This evidence strongly indicates that the revolutionary movement in Boston was more open and pluralist than scholars have believed. It was not a unitary organization, but a loose alliance of many overlapping groups. That structure gave Paul Revere and Joseph Warren a special importance, which came from the multiplicity and range of their alliances.
None of this is meant to deny the preeminence of other men in different roles. Samuel Adams was especially important in managing the Town Meeting, and the machinery of local government, and was much in the public eye. Otis was among its most impassioned orators. John Adams was the penman of the Revolution. John Hancock was its “milch cow,” as a Tory described him. But Revere and Warren moved in more circles than any others. This gave them their special roles as the linchpins of the revolutionary movement — its communicators, coordinators, and organizers of collective effort in the cause of freedom. … In sum, the more we learn about the range and variety of political associations in Boston, the more open, complex and pluralist the revolutionary movement appears, and the more important (and significant) Paul Revere’s role becomes. He was not the dominant or controlling figure. Nobody was in that position. The openness and diversity of the movement were the source of his importance.
So where the Boston radicals were meeting in taverns to plan their Tea Party, today we have virtual tools to enhance our associations. All told, I see more similarities than differences in the social and political structures of past and present. On this latter point, note how Fischer (writing in 1994) describes the opposing systems of intelligence for the British and the Americans, and see how it parallels today’s wingnut organization, where information flows down from the omniscient White House inner circle, and also how it parallels today’s liberal sphere that lives up (unwittingly, no doubt) to its legacy of disorder in the interest of intellectual strength.
Each side recognized the critical importance of intelligence, and both went busily about that vital task. But they did so in different ways. The British system was created and controlled from the top down. It centered very much on General Gage himself. The gathering of information commonly began with questions from the commander in chief. The lines of inquiry reached outward like tentacles from his headquarters in Province House. This structure proved a source of strength in some respects, and weakness in others. The considerable resources of the Royal government could be concentrated on a single problem. But when the commander in chief asked all the questions, he was often told answers that he wished to hear. Worse, the questions that he did not think to ask were never answered at all.
The American system of intelligence was organized in the opposite way, from the bottom up. Self-appointed groups such as Paul Revere’s voluntary association of Boston mechanics gathered information on their own initiative. Other individuals in many towns did the same. These efforts were coordinated through an open, disorderly network of congresses and committees, but no central authority controlled this activity in Massachusetts – not the Provincial Congress or Committee of Safety, not the Boston Committee of Correspondence or any small junto of powerful leaders; not Sam Adams or John Hancock, not even the indefatigable Doctor Warren, and certainly not Paul Revere. The revolutionary movement in New England had many leaders, but no commander. Nobody was truly in charge. This was a source of weakness in some ways. They wrangled incessantly in congresses, conventions, committees and town meetings. But by those clumsy processes, many autonomous New England minds were enlisted in a common effort – a source of energy, initiative, and intellectual strength for this popular movement.
The blogs and the rest of the virtual community are vital, but I agree with Ché Pasa that from time to time we need a tea party of some form to bring it all together, to physically demonstrate the movement and spread awareness of America’s dissent from within. In keeping with that notion, I think the lefty blogistan should up its emphasis on the importance of rallies and protests.
In the meanwhile, here’s to hoping today’s march on Washington makes the news.
Incidentally, Josh, you must have noticed that Bush’s very expansive claims of executive authority are being made by the first President in our history to delegate to his Vice President anything close to the authority over policy and personnel that he has ceded to Cheney. Back in 1980 the GOP Convention audience was kept amused by an effort to establish a “co-Presidency” with Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, who’d have been given extensive authority if elected. Reagan decided then that it was a stupid idea; he wasn’t running to be half a President. And now we have a President weak enough to make the “co-Presidency” a reality.
I was thinking along similar lines earlier today:
These people are proving that a president can get away with anything (but an illicit blowjob) if he’s willing to push the envelope. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney set out to do when he chose himself to be the defacto president back in 2000.
It truly is amazing that a vice president has not only wielded such power but has also stated openly that his goal in office was to expand executive authority:
In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.
President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.
“I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff,” Cheney said.
Most of Cheney’s colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass US laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of “disdain for the law.”
Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution “does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping Presidential power.”
The Iran-contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power — nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president’s hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast “inherent” powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress.
Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration’s hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney’s staff has also been behind President Bush’s record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.
A close look at key moments in Cheney’s career — from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under the first President Bush — suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects.
That’s a practical problem for the US government and an abstract philosophical point — until you realize that the most powerful vice president in history, who could never have been elected president in his own right, pretty much appointed himself vice president to a man he knew was an imbecile. How very convenient.
This reminds of this essay by Michael Lind* from ’03 that I’ve always found fascinating:
How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father’s, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney’s right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
Never forget that John McCain’s BFF in the 2000 election was Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard braintrust. They used to call it “National Greatness” conservatism or “benevolent hagemony” but they’re really just obfuscatory terms for American imperialism or world domination.
These are the people who Dick Cheney, the accidental vice president, brought into the government. They did it during the truncated transition and while Junior was off on a partridge hunt with Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar and James Baker was busy in Florida:
Once in Spain, Bush, Knight and the executives were joined by Norman Schwarzkopf and proceeded to a private estate in Pinos Altos, about 60 kilometers from Madrid, to shoot red-legged partridges, the fastest game birds in the world. Bush impressed the hunting party as a fine wing shot and a gentleman — the 76-year-old former president was not above offering to clean mud off the boots of his fellow hunters. Throughout the trip, Bush kept in touch with the election developments via e-mail. By Saturday, Nov. 11, a machine recount had shrunk his son’s lead in Florida to a minuscule 327 votes. “I kind of wish I was in the U.S. so I could help prevent the Democrats from working their mischief,” he told another hunter in his party.
On Tuesday, November 14, Bush and Schwarzkopf arrived in England, where Brent Scowcroft joined them and they continued their game hunting on Bandar’s estate. They kept a close eye on the zigs and zags of the recount battle. As a power play to demonstrate his confidence to the media, the Democratic Party, and the American populace, George W. Bush announced the members of his White House transition team even before the Florida vote-count battle was over.
I’m not sure what it all means except that Cheney is an undemocratic, power-mad freak, which we already knew. But as I watching what’s emerging from the Libby Trail, it’s more and more apparent that his dark influence on the empty codpiece was …. no accident.
*Let us all add Lind to the list of intellectuals who were right about the war and are ignored by the media. He is not only an intellectual, he works at a centrist think tank, he used to be a Republican and he is from Texas. What more do they want? This piece was written in April of 2003, right after the invasion and it was right on.
But no, let’s listen to all the usual suspects be wrong over and over again.
(now on DVD). Set in a not-so-distant future L.A., the story injects themes of existential dilemma, drug-fueled paranoia and Orwellian government surveillance (hmm, that’s timely) into what is otherwise a fairly standard undercover-cop-who’s-gone-too-deep yarn. Keanu Reeves stars as a dazed and confused narc who has become helplessly addicted to the mind-altering drug that he has been assigned to help eradicate (“substance D”). Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Linklater alumni Rory Cochrane are his fellow D-heads who may not exactly be whom they appear to be on the surface. Adding to the mood of hallucinatory psychosis is Linklater’s controversial use of roto-scoping (as per his underrated Waking Life). The rotoscoping technique does present challenges to the actors; Downey, with his Chaplinesque knack for physical expression, pulls it off best, while the more inert performers like Reeves and Ryder are akin to oil paintings. Linklater’s script keeps fairly close to its source material-particularly in relation to the more cerebral elements (Linklater’s propensity for lots of talk and little action may be a turn-off for those expecting another Minority Report). Depending on what you bring with you, the film is a) a cautionary tale about addiction, b) a warning about encroaching technocracy, c) an indictment on the government’s “war” on drugs, d) a really cool flick to watch while stoned, e) the longest 99 minutes of your life or f) all of the above. 
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