Letter From Paris...Ohio
My letter to the LA Times Travel section:
Two years ago, I pitched the LA Times Travel section on writing a ìletter from Parisî -- a city Iím in every three or four months, and for an entire month every summer. Travel turned me down, which, of course, is their prerogative. It was with some interest that I began reading LA Times travel writer Susan Spanoís new blog from Paris; and after I read the first few entries, it was with some disappointment.
Spano is printing the most facile, uninvestigated observations about Paris. Each entry, so far, has at least one glaring error; each, in my opinion, an error that could have been corrected by an extra moment or two of effort on Spanoís part to be astute in her observations, and/or do a little backup investigation as to whether her appraisals were, in fact, correct. For example:
1. Monoprix is not the ìWal-Mart Of Paris.î Monoprix sells wonderful (and often expensive) wines, cheeses and meats, and fruits and vegetables of the quality youíd find at Whole Foods (not marked ìbiologiqueî [organic], but not the crap sold in grocery stores here, either). Moreover, they sell extremely sexy lingerie -- contrasting Wal-Mart, which wonít even carry mass-market consumer magazines like Maxim, due to Wal-Martís puritanical bent. A more accurate description would be that Monoprix is ìTarget with a foie gras section.î When I wrote this to Spano, she commented that I wasnít the only one whoíd told her that. Not a surprise!2. ìCamembert Rusticî is actually ìCamembert Rustique.î ìRustic Camembertî wouldnít really be accurate, because itís not really ìrusticî -- itís just called that, much like French fries and French toast. Check it out for yourself! They sell it at Whole Foods.
3. The superette Proxi is not like 7-11. Most are not open 24 hours, first of all. In fact, I would venture that few or none are -- although it seems likely at least some would be open way past Spanoís bedtime, considering that the Paris she blogs about seems more Paris, Ohio, than Paris, France. Moreover, the Proxiís Iíve shopped at sell fine wine, cheese, and chocolate, and fruit -- of Trader Joeís or Whole Foodsí caliber.
4. Despite the fact that Spano observed people eating while walking down the street, it is not considered ìacceptableî to eat while running around. It is considered rude and unacceptable. (There are a lot of murders in South Central LA, too, but it doesnít mean murder is okay.) Perhaps Spano should notice who eats running around -- only 14-year-olds and plumbers and plasterers. Because she wrote that while I was in Paris last week, I took the liberty of asking several Parisians if her observation was accurate. All three confirmed my observation above. One Parisienne, a midlevel editor at a French publishing house that I spoke to at Bar du MarchÈ, told me (in French, of course) that only lower classes do that.
Yes, these are small details. But if youíre going to have somebody writing for you from Paris, who is known as a journalist, perhaps she should offer more than her most cursory (and incorrect) observations of the city. I really would rather read her blog for enjoyment than for errors.
Finally, Paris is, at least for me, at once hilarious, absurd, and challenging. I see little of that reflected in Spanoís blog. Itís a shame that the LA Times is so, apparently, terrified to have anyone write for them who might have something exciting or interesting to impart. If your paper, like so many dailies, is seeking readers who wonít be dead in five years, youíre certainly going about it the wrong way. --Amy Alkon
UPDATE: Because itís important, at least to me, to fact-check what I write before printing or posting it, I sent the piece above to a close friend whoís French; born in Paris, who lived there most of her life, but is now living in Los Angeles. Hereís her response.
Hey miss amy, Welcome back! WOW... I completely agree with everything you're setting the record straight about. You can tell the LA times that French people absolutely endorse 100% your observations.Gros bisous
N
Conservatives And Your Fetus
In yet another big step in the slow and sneaky march to stomp out abortion, Jim Abrams of AP reports:
In a major win for social conservatives, Congress is sending to the president legislation that would expand the legal rights of the unborn by making it a separate crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.The Unborn Victims of Violence Act cleared the Senate on a 61-38 vote Thursday, a month after the House passed the bill and five years after conservatives first tried to move the legislation through Congress.
The measure is limited in scope, applying only to harm to a fetus while a federal crime is being committed against the pregnant mother, such as terrorist attacks, drug-related shootings or attacks on federal lands or military bases. But proponents on both sides of the fetal rights and abortion issue saw far-reaching consequences.
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said that with the president's signature, "our nation will be one giant step closer to rebuilding a culture of life, where every child, born and unborn, is given the protections they so clearly deserve." President Bush (news - web sites) has urged Congress to send a bill to his desk.
But the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Kate Michelman, said it would be the first time ever in federal law that an embryo or fetus is recognized as a distinct person, separate from the woman. "Much of this is preparing for the day the Supreme Court has a majority that will overrule Roe v. Wade (news - web sites)," the 1973 Supreme Court decision affirming a woman's right to end a pregnancy.
Bye-bye women's rights! Hello, coat hangers! Sound farfetched to you that women could soon become Margaret Atwood-style baby pods? It sounds less and less farfetched to me every day.
Two Plus Two Equals Paperweight
The Bush Administration has a bad habit of hiring people to add up all the facts, then looking the other way when the facts don't add up the way they like, writes Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect:
Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did.But that only begins the list. There's Paul O'Neill, whose recent memoir recounts his ongoing and unavailing battle to get the president to take the skyrocketing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. There's Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. There's Richard Foster, the Medicare accountant, who was forbidden by his superiors from giving Congress an accurate assessment of the cost of the administration's new program. All but Foster are now gone, and Foster's sole insurance policy is that Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress were burnt by his muzzling.
In the Bush administration, you're an empiricist at your own peril. Plainly, this has placed any number of conscientious civil servants -- from Foster, who totaled the costs on Medicare, to Clarke, who charted the al Qaeda leads before Sept. 11 -- at risk. In a White House where ideology trumps information time and again, you run the numbers at your own risk. Nothing so attests to the fundamental radicalism of this administration as the disaffection of professionals such as Foster and Clarke, each of whom had served presidents of both parties.
The revolt of the professionals poses a huge problem for the Bush presidency precisely because it is not coming from its ideological antagonists. Clarke concludes his book making a qualified case for establishing a security sub-agency within the FBI that would be much like Britain's MI5 -- a suggestion clearly not on the ACLU's wish list. O'Neill wants a return to traditional Republican budget-balancing. The common indictment that these critics are leveling at the administration is that it is impervious to facts. That's a more devastating election year charge than anything John Kerry could come up with.
There are a few of us out here -- me, for example -- who aren't glued to one party or another, but would simply like to see a little common sense, rationality, and respect for science and data from the people running this country. Evidently, that's too much to ask.
Bush Tough On...The Truth
A former FBI translator testified that the FBI had detailed information, prior to 9-11, that terrorists were planning to attack the US with airplanes. Eric Boehlert writes in Salon:
Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."Edmonds' charge comes when the Bush White House is trying to fend off former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's testimony that it did not take serious measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism, and al-Qaida specifically, in the months leading up to 9/11.
Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the FBI, making $32 an hour for six months, beginning Sept. 20, 2001. She was assigned to the FBI's investigation into Sept. 11 attacks and other counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, where she translated reams of documents seized by agents who, for the previous year, had been rounding up suspected terrorists.
She says those tapes, often connected to terrorism, money laundering or other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have made apparent that an al- Qaida plot was in the works. Edmonds cannot talk in detail about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department gag order since 2002.
"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."
Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no," she insists.
Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle on the FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown into the spotlight as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related information, often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct, security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit, including supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the crucial post-9/11 period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its next annual budget. As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was harassed at the FBI. She was fired in March 2002.
Calling all the disingenuous Republicans, who were quick to call for Clinton's impeachment when he lied about the whereabouts of his penis. Isn't it time to impeach Bush and Co. for lying about stuff that really matters? At the very least, join the Anyone But Bush parade: I'll vote for Kerry...or my movie wardrobe lady-next-door neighbor before I vote for Bush.
Worried about huge Democratic-style entitlements? Well, that's what a vote for Bush gets you. Like the Medicare package the administration slimed through Congress by hushing up the real numbers. There's no Big Democrat like a lying Republican giving handouts to ensure his re-election.
UPDATE: Four 9-11 moms go to the intelligence failure hearings in the Senate, and don't like what they hear -- especially that nobody takes responsibility for being less-than-vigilant.
Dumb Crap People In Authority Believe
The TSA actually caused a flight to be canceled because a "psychic" thought there was a bomb on the plane.
They Just Want To Get Drunk And Have A Lot Of Sex
Martyrdom, Palestinian-style: How to sell a 16-year-old on blowing himself up:
The teenage suicide bomber, caught by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint, said he wanted to reach paradise where 72 virgins were waiting for him.Hussam Abdo, 16, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, he had learned about paradise in school.
ìA river of honey, a river of wine and 72 virgins. Since I have been studying Koran I know about the sweet life that waits there,î he said.
He was caught yesterday with a suicide bomb vest strapped to his body at a crowded checkpoint, setting off a tense encounter with soldiers the army said he had been sent to kill.
Soldiers, taking cover behind concrete barriers, sent a yellow army robot to bring scissors to the teenager so he could cut off the vest and then made him strip to his underwear to ensure he was unarmed before detaining him.
Leaders in the Al Aqsa Martyrsí Brigades denied they were responsible for dispatching the boy.
However, local members of the militant group ñ which has ties to Yasser Arafatís Fatah movement ñ in Nablusí Balata refugee camp said they had sent the boy to the checkpoint.
The teenagerís family said he was gullible and easily manipulated.
Well, maybe our side could be the side doing the manipulation. Bill Maher seems to have it right:
...We should hire women to infiltrate al-Qaida cells, and fuck them.Things would change quickly. Because young Muslim men don't really hate America, they're jealous of America. We have rap videos, the Hilton sisters and magazines with titles like "Barely Legal." You know what's barely legal in Afghanistan? Everything.
Young men need sex, and if they don't get it for month after month after month, they wind up cursing the day they ever decided to go to Cornell.
Have you ever wondered why the word from the Arab street is so angry? It's because it's a bunch of guys standing in the street! Which is what guys do when they don't have girlfriends, or aren't allowed to even talk to a girl -- of course they want to commit suicide. Unlike this country, where it's the married guys who wanna kill themselves.
Pull out the troops, send in the hookers with vats of Gallo? Maybe it's not such a crazy idea.
(72 virgins article via Reason's blog)
Refresh Princess Of Venice Beach
I've been a little lax about updating my columns on my Web site...there's a new one up now -- Thighs Matters -- the column that generated a fat mail bag of complaint letters from the "fat-acceptance" girls. (If you can't see it, click "refresh" on your browser.)
Homeland Stupidity
The Feds give Wyoming, that near-empty hotbed of terrorist interest, $61 per person for homeland security; here in California, where Hollywood is a de facto red flag at a bull for terrorists, they dole out just $14 per citizen. Then there's Alaska, with $58 per citizen, and New York, with only $25. Time Magazine's Amanda Ripley calls funding "almost inversely proportional to risk," and attributes it to directing money based on emotion rather than actual assessment of risk. Then there are all the greedy senators from small states, like Leahy of Vermont, who pretends to think the frozen ski slopes there are as important and in as much danger as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In Ripley's article, she quotes Tim Ransdell, who "authored one of the few comprehensive assessments of homeland-security money on behalf of the Public Policy Institute of California":
Wyoming and South Dakota are important states, but it's a bit counterintuitive to say an individual in those states is manyfold more important than someone living in a state that has a border with a foreign nation, some of the nation's icons and almost half of the nation's containerized cargo.
Then Al O'Leary of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association weighs in:
It goes against every fundamental precept of fighting crime. If you're having a robbery pattern in a particular community, you put detectives there. It's actually a no-brainer, but there's apparently no brain in Washington, D.C.
Abstaining From The Facts
Naomi Ninneman of Planned Parenthood explains the "only" in "abstinence only" sex ed:
OVER THE PAST year, Planned Parenthood's educators have been hearing a frightening new question from Massachusetts high school students: Why bother using condoms when you have sex, since they don't work anyway?We teach sex education classes in more than 50 of the Commonwealth's high schools every year, so we are used to answering tough questions. We are used to combating myths. But we are not used to students challenging established scientific facts about the effectiveness of condoms.
Ask students where they are getting this information, and they almost always point to an abstinence-only-until-marriage program.
Abstinence-only education has been in the news recently. In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed doubling federal funding for it. But many people are surprised when they find out what the "only" in "abstinence-only" really means.
It means, under the federal regulations governing these programs, that educators are prohibited from telling students that condoms can prevent pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.
They cannot discuss the facts even when talking to sexually active teens who are at high risk of contracting HIV. According to these guidelines, condoms and other forms of contraception can only be discussed to emphasize their failure rates. Some programs, for example, provide students with two lists: one of diseases they can get when having unprotected sex and another of diseases they can get when using a condom. The lists are the same. Both include HIV, but the fact that condoms are roughly 96 percent effective in preventing the spread of this disease is nowhere to be found.
This marks a radical departure from traditional sex education, which focuses on a comprehensive approach to preventing teen pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases. It also makes abstinence-only programs dangerous.
It's not only the individual child of the nutbag fundamentalist who's affected by this. Private religious fanaticism affects public health -- potentially endangering anybody who has sex with anybody trained by the birth-control luddites. And anybody who has sex with them...and so on, and so on.
And excuse me, but why is it wrong to have sex as a teenager, if you happen to be emotionally ready and if you protect yourself? Why, exactly, is sex "wrong"? Oh, and please -- any reason but "because the bible tells (you) so" will do.
Ruth Seymour Gets Loh-er And Loh-er
She'll show everyone! And she does! By releasing a letter Sandra wrote to the station immediate after being fired, KCRW station manager Ruth Seymour will tell the real story about Sandra. Unfortunately, the only bombshell she drops is that Sandra is kind, graceful, and polite -- and extremely concerned that the engineer won't lose his job. Not exactly the stuff Page Six is made of!
Whine And Filthy Lucre
A mid-list author complains bitterly that she isn't making the big bucks as a novelist, thanks to meanie publishers who wouldn't take on her second book after her first book lost money, and other such tales of woe. To keep her daughter "in Nikes," she was forced to clean septic tanks with a toothbrush and three pieces of Kleenex; ie, suffer the indignity of writing copy for the dot-coms and penning a celebrity bio. A tragic tale of woe. As movie critic Peter Stack once wrote: "My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked."
Cutting Off An Arm to Cure A Brain Tumor
That's pretty much what George Bush did, in going to war with Iraq, as supposed retribution for 9-11. I'm not one of those doves who thought we should sit around picking our collective nose after the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked. But it made sense to me to go directly after Bin Laden. And yes, we have done a humanitarian thing, freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. And I support our military people fighting in Iraq (and even sent the soldiers a case of tuna fish [via an army chaplain]) and I have a box of goods I'm packing to send to an orphanage in Iraq (per the suggestion of another army chaplain [via a blog ad on Instapundit]).
That said, there are many countries that could use a humanitarian overthrow of their repressive, murderous, and anti-democratic regimes. If it's on that basis we went into Iraq, we have a whole lot of other countries to invade. If it's truly about Weapons Of Mass Destruction; well, when are we going to take over North Korea?
Former Security Advisor Richard Clarke has a few harsh words (on 60 Minutes Sunday night) for the Bush administration about how they ignored pre-9/11 warnings about al Qaeda, and about their manic panic to find justifications for invading Iraq:
"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
Is the Bush administration as tough on terror as they make themselves out to be? Probably not. But they sure are hell on DJs and rock stars using dirty words! (Unfortunately, it's airborne bio-weapons, not flying fucks, that we really need to worry about.)
Bush-League Contradictions
Children do better with married parents says the data trotted out by the republi-nannies behind the $1.5 billion dollar marriage promotion budget -- but we still aren't going to let gay parents marry. Here's how Gabriel Damast, the 13-year-old child of two moms, felt about his parents' marriage, according to a New York Times story by Patricia Leigh Brown:
"It was so cool," said Gabriel, 13, who served as the ringbearer, after standing in line overnight with his parents. "I always accepted that `Yeah, they're my moms,' but they were actually getting married. I felt thick inside with happiness. Just thick."
Here's how it worked for Max Blachman, 13:
"Before it was, `Oh, your parents are just partners,' " said Max Blachman, the 13-year-old son of lesbian parents in Berkeley. "Now, they're spouses. So it's a bigger way of thinking about them."
Here's how it worked for Alex Morris, 11:
Speaking of his mothers' marriage, Alex said: "It is something I always wanted. I've always been around people saying, `Oh, my parents anniversary is this week.' It's always been the sight of two parents, married, with rings. And knowing I'd probably never experience it ever."That changed in the City Hall rotunda as his mothers exchanged vows. "The atmosphere was just springing with life," Alex recalled. "I just couldn't hold myself in. It was oh my god oh my god oh my god. I felt so happy I wanted to scream."
It's unfortunate that our fundamentalist-in-chief was told by his religion that gay sex was wrong, but how, exactly, does that make the needs of Gabriel, Max, and Alex different from those of any other children?
The Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy
Don't laugh. Hillary Clinton knew a thing or two.
(via Metafilter)
AprËs Le DÈluge
I just arrived in Paris, to find hundreds of pieces of blog spam scattered all over my blog. Engaged in heavy cleaning. More blog items tomorrow.
Butt Pillow
A present for your ass. And here's a present for your cow's ass. Butt benevolence, all around!
(via Cruel Site Of The Day)
The Supreme Court Stands Up For Wife-Beaters
The Supreme Court just killed evidence-based prosecution, a prime way of bringing domestic abusers to justice, writes South Bronx public defender David Feige, on Slate:
One of the peculiar realities of domestic violence cases is thatóabused or notóthe complaining witnesses often don't want their loved ones prosecuted. Thanks to the Supreme Court, many more of those victims are about to get their wish. This week's decision in Crawford v. Washington , which reversed the assault conviction of Michael Crawfordósentenced to 14 1/2 years in prison for stabbing a man he believed had tried to rape his wifeówas overtly about the Constitution's confrontation clause. But the ruling will radically change the prosecution of domestic violence cases throughout the country, empowering complainants to resist the demands of prosecutors and limiting the number of cases that proceed with unwilling witnesses.It is not uncommon for alleged victims and prosecutors to have divergent agendas. This divergence can become particularly acute when prosecutors proceed with a case despite an alleged victim's desires. Prosecutors are, of course, within their rights to do thisóthere is no question that once an arrest is made, it is up to the state to prosecute or not, regardless of a victim's wishesóthat's why criminal actions are captioned the People v. Someone or the United States of America v. Someone Else . But while pursuing a prosecution despite the express wishes of the alleged victim is rare in the average case, in domestic violence cases it's commonplace.
Not any more!
Everybody's Outsourcing
Even The Mob.
(via Fark.com)
Thomas Friedman Visits The Global Village
And peers into the two faces of globalization:
India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan each spontaneously generated centers for their young people's energies. In India they're called "call centers," where young men and women get their first jobs and technical skills servicing the global economy and calling the world. In Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia they're called "madrassas," where young men, and only young men, spend their days memorizing the Koran and calling only God. Ironically, U.S. consumers help to finance both. We finance the madrassas by driving big cars and sending the money to Saudi Arabia, which uses it to build the madrassas that are central to Al Qaeda's global supply chain. And we finance the call centers by consuming modern technologies that need backup support, which is the role Infosys plays in the global supply chain.ÝÝBoth Infosys and Al Qaeda challenge America: Infosys by competing for U.S. jobs through outsourcing, and Al Qaeda by threatening U.S. lives through terrorism. As Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy professor, put it: "Our next election will be about these two challenges ó with the Republicans focused on how we respond to Al Qaeda, and the losers from globalization, and the Democrats focused on how we respond to Infosys, and the winners from globalization."
Every once in a while the technology and terrorist supply chains intersect ó like last week. Reuters quoted a Spanish official as saying after the Madrid train bombings: "The hardest thing [for the rescue workers] was hearing mobile phones ringing in the pockets of the bodies. They couldn't get that out of their heads."
Solidarity With Spain
Instapundit suggests sending cards and letters of support, and flowers. Here's the address:
Embassy Of Spain
2375 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
The Embassy phone number, which you'll need if you send flowers, is 202.452.0100
Everything Old Might Be New Again
Okay, so we've been suffering with Bush for four years -- but, was he really elected president? No. The details on that -- how a company called DBT wiped thousands of Democratic voters off the election rolls -- were shoved aside. Here's a transcript of Greg Palast on the issue for the BBC, and a flash piece about it that's worth watching. Will we have a righteous election in 2004? Depends on whether the game is fair or cooked. I know everyone's sick of this issue, but take a look at this stuff. There's a lot that was glossed over in the "whether George Bush really is president" question, back in the day, and it's illuminated here.
By the way, Al Gore, whom I voted for (a little less grudgingly than I'll vote for Kerry) showed what he wasn't made of by accepting this fraud without a fight. Disgusting. And it's had a pretty big and alarming impact on all of us.
How Scary Is It?
This station can't play the Pink Floyd song "Money," from the "Darkside Of The Moon" album their listeners voted number one, because it has the word "bullshit" in it. Playing it would hang them out for a $275,000 fine. How long before that word is banned on blogs, too? And don't tell me that's a silly question.
(via Metafilter)
The Schwing Vote
Howard Stern is mobilizing his listeners against Bush, writes Eric Boehlert in Salon:
Declaring a "radio jihad" against President Bush, syndicated morning man Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the White House are shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and one they never saw coming.The pioneering shock jock, "the man who launched the raunch," as the Los Angeles Times once put it, has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the influence and national reach Stern has.
"The potential impact is huge," says Charles Goyette, talk-show host at KFYI in Phoenix. "And it's not just with the 8 million people who tune it, it's that he breaks the spell. Everybody's been enchanted by Bush, that he's a great wartime leader and to criticize him is unpatriotic. Now Stern pounds him every day and it shatters that illusion that the man is invincible and he shouldn't be criticized."
"He's got one of the biggest audiences in all of radio, and perhaps the most loyal," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the nonpartisan monthly that covers radio's news/talk industry. "And that's why he's so dangerous for the White House."
We can only hope. I'm no Democrat, and I loathe Kerry, but I'd vote for an autistic monkey before I'd vote for Bush.
Confessions Of A Welfare Queen
Are you best friends with John Stossel? I hope so, because you paid for his beach house.
Lost Angeles
A pretty hard place to get a date. Alexandra Jacobs interviews me for her Palmy Days column about Internet dating in Los Angeles in the New York Observer:
"L.A. forces you to do Internet dating, because everyoneís apart from everyone else," said Amy Alkon, 40, a redheaded syndicated columnist who moved to Venice after many years in New York and has tried both Match and Matchmaker.com. "People arenít as guarded in New York. In L.A., if you ask people what they do, they act as if you want to rob their house. Here, everybody acts like theyíre a movie star, like, ëWhy do you want to talk to me?í Like you want something from them. Itís a disease."Sheís currently going out with a man who does research for the author Elmore Leonard; she met the fellow at an Apple computer store, after a long and flamboyant search that included placing a $2,200 display ad in the L.A. Times. "L.A. men are less troubledóunless theyíre troubled New York Jews who have just moved to Los Angelesóand thatís in the uncomplimentary, uncomplicated sense," she said. "Theyíre not complicated because they havenít had a thought, other than whatís on TV, in 20 years."
Guys return the compliment, perhaps even more forcefully.
"I find that you can talk about more things outside of yourself with New York women," said a 35-year-old screenwriter who moved from the Upper West Side to the Miracle Mile. "You can talk about the newspaper. Here, it doesnít seem like anybody reads it. I was at a party one time and I made a comment about something Iíd read in the paper, and a woman turned to me and said, ëDid you just move out here?í And I said yes. And she said, ëYou wonít be reading the paper much longer.í That really shocked me.
That's not entirely true. But you are unlikely to be reading the paper, New York Times commercial-style, in bed with somebody else. That's why, as I wrote in a recent column, "Desperate is the new normal."
Not The Only Goddess In Town
Got an e-mail from...get this...The Mold Goddess! You have to check out her site. She was responding to my column about Mr. Unclean, originally titled "We Could Grow Mold Together"; retitled "Toxic mold failing as a romantic attraction." (I hate when they change my headlines!)
The Religious Wrong
Be afraid. Be very afraid. From the site, theocracywatch.org:
"The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States is a Christian nation." --Texas Republican Party Platform, 2002Here we are in the year 2004 and a small group of religious extremists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. This web site demonstrates how we got here and how the media, even the progressive media is missing what is the most important story in modern American politics.
Please don't misunderstand the title: the Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party. This site is not about religion, nor about Christianity, nor about Republicans. This site is about how a small group of Republican strategists targeted a religious constituency to expand the base of their party, and how a small group of religious extremists targeted the Republican Party to bring the United States government under religious control.
Paranoia? Well, as the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
(via Metafilter)
Isn't It Romantic?
Not really. See?
(via Gossiplist)
Public Stalker Number One
Florida reporters and other news media employees testing the state's public records law met with some difficulty when they requested information. Officials lied to, harrassed, and even threatened the requesters:
At many agencies, asking for a document immediately sparked suspicion.Roger Desjarlais, the Broward County administrator, threatened a volunteer by saying, "I can make your life very difficult."
After insisting that the volunteer give his name, Desjarlais used the Internet to identify the volunteer, find his cell phone number and call him after work hours.
In an interview after the audit, Desjarlais denied that he threatened or tried to intimidate the volunteer, who is a reporter with SNN-Channel 6 in Sarasota.
Desjarlais defended his actions, saying that the volunteer raised suspicion when he declined to explain who he was. Officials across the state had similar misgivings about volunteers who came into their offices.
They cited a number of arbitrary reasons for their suspicions, including the volunteers' hair length, casual dress and, in one case, "the look in his eyes."
Yeah -- he probably looked...uninformed!
(via Reason's Daily Brickbats)
Zero Intelligence Policy
A 12-year-old boy is expelled, under the zero-tolerance policy, for bringing scissors to school -- to use in sewing class! I guess school officials were afraid he might wreak terrible violence on the fabric -- always a problem in my case, in the days I (rather optimistically) attempted to sew.
All Things Being Equally Unequal
Cathy Young is right about how wrong "marriage privileging" (granting of special rights to people who are traditionally married) is -- and on top of that, denying marriage to non-heterosexuals who want those now-granted marital rights.
Personally, I don't believe in committing to someone for life. I actually find it anti-life -- because it promotes staying together after the relationship is dead. Well, there is divorce, you say. Yes, but I don't make promises I'm not reasonably sure I can keep. And I can't say, if I love you today, that I will love you 15 years from now. People change. And when they do, if they change in such a way that their relationship is no longer viable, they should amicably split up. Why is it considered tragic when relationships end? Things end, things die. It's merely a fact of life -- one we should begin to accept. There's more respect for life in living truthfully -- and splitting up -- than there is in two people living in misery together and pretending it's bliss.
Bush League Science
Missing the scientific votes, President Bush, to make the ban on stem-cell research go your way? Just fire the opposition! Unfortunately, that won't be enough to silence the opposition. Cell biologist Elizabeth H. Blackburn, formerly a member of the President's Council on Bioethics tells all:
When I read the council's first discussion documents, my heart sank. The language was not what I was used to seeing in scientific discourse -- it seemed to me to present pre-judged views and to use rhetoric to make points. Still, the debates we had in the ensuing months proved far-ranging, and all comments were politely received. And, despite the betting of outsiders, 10 of the council's 17 members (one had retired) initially voted against recommending a ban on therapeutic cloning. A late change to the question being voted on turned the minority who were in favor of a ban into a majority of 10 favoring a four-year moratorium, an option the council had not discussed in meetings. But the report issued in July 2002 contained a breadth of views. It also contained a series of personal statements by council members, many of them dissenting from the report's official recommendations.In the year and a half following that report, I began to sense much less tolerance from the chairman for dissenting views. I will focus only on embryonic stem cell research.
Work with animal models had been indicating the potential benefits of such research for more than two decades. More recently, breakthrough research had suggested for the first time that those avenues of investigation would be possible in humans, with revolutionary implications for health care. Yet at council meetings, I consistently sensed resistance to presenting human embryonic stem cell research in a way that would acknowledge the scientific, experimentally verified realities. The capabilities of embryonic versus adult stem cells, and their relative promise for medicine, were obfuscated. Although I was not able to attend every meeting, I engaged fully in preparations for the report: I read and assessed the published science, attended presentations on new research at national and international scientific conferences, and consulted with cell biologists, including stem cell biologists, across the country. The information I submitted was not reflected in the report drafts.
Clearly, the council's reports concerned politically charged topics. I knew that my views on cloning and stem cell research did not match those of either Kass or Bush, as I understood them: In his public statements, the president had supported banning therapeutic as well as reproductive cloning. Still, I was not prepared for the phone call I received at home from the White House on Wednesday, Feb. 25. The caller requested that on Friday afternoon I call the White House Personnel Office. No hint was given as to the reason. When I called, the director said that the White House had decided to "make changes" in the council and that it was adding new people to replace some individual members. I asked him whether this meant that my term on the council had terminated, and the reply was yes.
And what "changes" they were. I was one of just three full-time biomedical scientists on the council. William May, a deeply thoughtful, erudite theologian and medical ethicist, was also leaving. He, too, had often differed with Kass on issues such as the moral worth of biomedical research and the ramifications of trying to legislate such research. And he, too, had voted against both a ban and a moratorium on therapeutic cloning.
When I read the published views of the three new members (bringing the council up to its original total of 18 members), it seemed to me they represented a loss of balance in the council, both professionally and philosophically. None was a biomedical scientist, and the views of all three were much closer to the views espoused by Kass than mine or May's were. One, a surgeon who was not a scientist, had championed a larger place for religious values in public life. Another was a political philosopher who had publicly praised Kass's work; the third, a political scientist, had described research in which embryos are destroyed as "evil."
Just "science" as usual in Bush-land!
(via Reason's blog)
Overheard By Jeff Jarvis
Bill Maher echoed the news that Ashcroft was in the hospital -- adding that doctors were figuring he got sick from "wiping his ass with the Bill of Rights."
The Hoggie Bag
A friend bought me dinner last week, and was a little peeved that I only ate about a third of my chicken. No, I hadn't eaten beforehand. But, I'm not a member of The Clean Plate Club -- aka Eat Until You Barf.
Nobody is going to give you an award for finishing the enormous portion of food a lot of restaurants in this country serve as dinner for one. You will, however, get an ass the size of Kansas if you eat it.
Kim Severinson writes that a lot of people don't even realize how much they're eating -- which, some surmise, is why America is so increasingly obese. I just don't understand. How hard is to to figure out, if you eat a full plate of French fries at every meal and a steak the size of a roast, the results are not going to be pretty?
The Appearance Of Safety
Malcolm Gladwell's terrific New Yorker piece on SUVs is now online. Here's his interview about the piece, previously linked here.
Vomit now.
Moooo!
The "average" American woman is a size 14! Kate Zernike writes in The New York Times about the personally supersized:
For years, an average woman was thought to be a size 8, although some circles had bumped that up to size 12 in recent years. But even the women who came in on the small side in the SizeUSA survey look more like what the longtime clothing industry standards would consider a size 14 ó the size at which "plus size" clothing begins.Industry standards set a size 8 at a 35-inch bust, a 27-inch waist, and 37.5-inch hip. In the survey, white women ages 18 to 25 came in, on average, 38-32-41, with white women ages 36 to 45 coming in at 41-34-43. (Barbie, long the plastic bane of body image, is said to have measurements that project to about 39-18-33.) In that same age group, black women measure, on average, 43-37-46, Hispanic women 42.5-36-44, and "other" women, which researchers said meant mostly Asian, 41-35-43.
Similarly, most men are larger than the traditional 40 regular, long considered the average. A 40 regular, according to standards, means a 40-inch chest, 34-inch waist, and 40-inch hip, with a 15.5-inch collar. In the survey, white men ages 18 to 25 had, on average, a 41-inch chest, 35-inch waist, 41-inch hips and a 16-inch collar (that is raw neck size ó shirts are generally sized at least a half-inch bigger). From the ages of 36 to 45, white men came in at 44-38-42, black men 43-37-42, Hispanic men 44-38-42 and "other" 42-37-41.
"Waists are the first problem, " said Jim Lovejoy, the director of SizeUSA and a director at TC2, the Cary, N.C., technology firm whose machines did the survey. "The numbers show that we're complex, but we're definitely getting heavier, and it's primarily in the waist ó and the hips follow the waist."
The last national survey was done in 1941, when the United States Department of Agriculture sent out researchers with tape measures to size up the population in anticipation of having to design military uniforms for World War II. Sirvart Mellian, an anthropologist and a member of the board that sets the clothing size standards for the American Society of Testing and Materials, said those numbers were then taken by the mail-order industry to design clothing sizes.
But they measured a population far less diverse than today's. As more Americans have become overweight, A.S.T.M. has increased the measurements for the standard sizes. Clothing companies, too, began using "vanity sizing," putting, say, a size 6 label on a size 10 in the hopes of luring a customer. Even men's sizes, which are considered more accurate because they are labeled in inches, are often "relaxed" to measure an inch bigger than the advertised size.
But until now, no one has gone out and updated the actual measurements. Clothing companies wanted updated information to better design products to fit their customers.
How about a stall in a barn? A lot of women in America act like there's some conspiracy making them fat. What it is, is pretty simple: they go places that serve huge portions of (often tasteless) food, or make themselves huge portions, then eat the whole thing. Then they lie, whale-like, on the sofa, wondering why the pounds aren't melting away.
Close, But No David Souter
Roe v. Wade almost went down in 1992, according to Supreme Court Justice Blackmun's recently released papers. What saved it? In part, apparently, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy's cold feet -- unexplained in Blackmun's papers. But, was it also positively affected by Justice David Souter's alleged need, as suggested by one of Blackmun's clerks, to preserve his dating service?!!
At one point, one of Blackmun's law clerks wrote that the three centrist justices could pay a price for disagreeing with the White House view on abortion.The unmarried Souter might lose his popularity with then-first lady Barbara Bush as her favorite "most-eligible bachelor" to invite to White House dinners, the clerk wrote.
It's been more than a decade since intimate details of the court's inner workings were revealed in Justice Thurgood Marshall's papers, which elicited bitter criticism within the court because the papers include secret memos and unpublished draft opinions in controversial cases.
Most current justices are expected to ensure their files and any embarrassing secrets they might hold will be protected long after their deaths.
Blackmun, like Marshall, served 24 years on the court and into his 80s, retiring in 1994. He accumulated far more correspondence than Marshall.
The appointee of President Nixon "took copious notes and never threw away any of his papers," Washington lawyer David Frederick said.
His authorship of Roe v. Wade brought him more than 60,000 angry letters and repeated threats on his life.
I'm no fan of the Democrats, but I suggest those of you who are planning on voting Bush back into office consider very carefully what might slip away in the course of another four more years.
Fundamentalism Kills
And chases away scientists. David Ewing Duncan writes about Doug Melton, a scientist working with stem cells in hopes of saving the lives of his two children:
Twelve-year-old Sam and 16-year-old Emma have been diagnosed with insulin- dependent diabetes. If Melton's research is successful, they could be spared the organ failure, blindness and heart disease that eventually afflict diabetics -- but only if Melton is allowed to continue his work by lawmakers in Washington, D.C. They worry that his methods might be immoral or dangerous and are threatening to shut down his work.
If Congress bans stem cell research, Melton's choices are continue his research and risk prison, or leave the country. Duncan, who wrote the article, notes the parallel to Gallileo, "broken and banished" in his final years, and living in house arrest, "his output of discoveries silenced." Everything old is new again? Well, not quite. Probably like a lot of other scientists, if fundamentalism triumphs in The Senate (in the form of legislation lumping stem cell cloning with reproductive cloning), Melton plans to leave the country for another country -- Britain, perhaps -- where the benefits of stem cell research now take precedence over the ravings of religious fantatics.
Sandra The Love Sponge
More from Cathy Seipp on the Sandra Tsing Loh firing.
The Nipple That Rocked Santa Monica
Janet Jackson's exposed nipple apparently did something weird to the clocks. It was 1976 when Patti Smith said "fuck" on WNEW radio, and got blacklisted by the station. And now, in 2004, Sandra Tsing Loh has been fired from KCRW, thanks to a "fuck" in her Sunday morning commentary that the engineer forgot to bleep (as was Sandra's intention). It's a scary, retrograde Puritan world we live in. LA Observed has a piece on it, Cathy Seipp has more on her blog, and then there's her LA City Beat column on it. Tell KCRW station head Ruth Seymour how you feel at mail@krcw.org.
UPDATE -- A friend of mine posted in the comments below:
Just emailed KCRW promising them another $100 on top of my annual subscription if they'll reinstate Sandra Tsing Loh.Suggest everyone who either likes her, or disapproves of Ruth Seymour's decision, or both, does the same.
More effective, in my opinion, than cancelling subscriptions, which is liable only to harden battle lines and needlessly punish the station as a whole. Besides, it's almost always more productive to reward good behaviour than to punish bad. (True of children, true of grown-ups too.)
He's right.
The Science Of Spin
Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, hurls a few whoppers around in the Washington Post in explaining the comings and goings of members on the council. Just one more example of how selective "science" is being handed down, right and left, by our fundamentalist-in-chief.
On a less depressing note, here's a link to the group -- The Union Of Concerned Scientists -- that advocates making decisions based on evidence, not coming up with the decisions first (after consulting with your pastor), then trolling for scientists to support it. That reminds me of a story I heard about a young guy in World War II, who was shooting at a wall. There were about ten perfect bullseyes, in chalk circles, on the wall. An officer came up and asked the guy how he'd learn to shoot so well. "It's easy," said the guy. "I shoot first, and draw the bullseyes afterward."
On to a more depressing note, here's a link to an article on the state of science in the Arab world; the Arab world, once a center for science (centuries ago), and now, anything but.
(Arabs in science link via Arts & Letters Daily)
Tying The Leash
"Gay marriage will not lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species marriage. When women got the vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting."
--Bill Maher
The Word Of The Day
A little souvenir from my deadline-day travels.
What's Your Dumb-Ass Question For The Candidate?
After Matt Welch heard somebody ask John Kerry "Is God on America's side?" he was inspired to come up with a his own list of dumb-ass questions for the candidates. Here are a few of my favorites:
* Does God love Guam and Puerto Rico just a little less? The District of Columbia? American Samoa?* Do non-human animals believe in oral sex?
* What if all this was a dream, and you woke up & you were the president of Mexico?
Remember, you heard it hear first. (And on the major news networks second.)
(via Reason's blog)
What Price (Imaginary) Love?
Can't buy a girlfriend? Just rent one:
She's the perfect girlfriend - funny, sexy and supportive. She'll cheer you up after a hard day, send you loving text messages and make your life complete. If you dump her, she'll beg to be taken back. There's only one small hiccup - you'll never get to meet her.This is the service promised by 'imaginary girlfriends' on the auction website ebay. Once known for selling collectables and leftovers, ebay has become the world's biggest car boot sale, with 94 million users and 3 million new items for sale every day.
Its massive success has created a subculture trading in bizarre, obscure or even theoretical items - human souls, aircraft carriers and now imaginary companions.
The phenomenon started in November when 'Judy', a 22-year-old Texan student, put herself up for sale 'totally on a whim'. 'It was just a late-night idea,' she says, aimed at men who wanted to claim they had a girlfriend. She already had a long-term boyfriend who 'thought it was kind of weird'. Her first two listings attracted 36,000 viewers and earned her $122. A craze was born.
By January, the trend had spread to the UK. There was 'xEmma Louizex' - '19, blond hair, very sexy and cute... trying to get into the acting/singing business'. She made £67. 'Nikki321' - 'a cute 19-year-old college girl from Berkshire' - got £48. 'Nightnursesara', a 'typical English rose', earned £30 'to fund my degree', although 'she' confessed to me that she was the creation of a married couple. Even the terrifying-sounding 'Wiccan_Pain_Slave' found a bidder willing to pay her a tenner.
One 'working mother, professional dancer and actress' decided that enhanced service was the way to go. One of her proposals was to die tragically in a car crash on the way to meeting you - she'd even place an obituary for you to show your friends.
What Newspapers In America Are Missing
Interviews like this: Marianne Faithful, Fabulous Beast.