Words of Wisdom

When moving to make friendly with a dog that is barking at you from behind a fence, always check for that "Beware of Dog" sign.


Shut up.

I = Da Newie Rock's Slave

The Strokes are releasing "Room on Fire" on Oct. 28th. Guh....RRRR...

Oh, hell. I'm buying it.

Tybalt, you Rat-Catcher...

Skeptical Notion has added me to his blogroll. As one might guess, he was as shocked to discover his "evil twin," as I was, but added me in a show of good-sportness and a professed need for ideological balance. I salute you, good sir. I enjoy nothing so much as a chivalrous opponent. Mayhaps we can get an email debate going for the benefit of our readership.

...Will you Walk?

Romeo and Juliet closes this weekend, I am sad/glad to say. Glad because I could use the free time; sad because the show has been an unqualified triumph, and I will miss it. I will mark the occasion with a few thoughts on the character I have played, Mercutio.


I'll start with the trendy: No, I don't think he's gay, or at least, not explicityly so. One is free to read homoerotic longings into the character's lines if one so desires, his seeming misogyny and affection for his young friend leaves such a possibility open. Since I've gotten the role, everyone else in the cast has made a point of assuming that Merc was a card-carrying GLAAD member, mostly to annoy me. I have only myself to blame, for getting annoyed about it. To my mind, playing an ambiguous character as "gay" immediately takes all the complexity away from him; it's an instant plot point. No matter what facets you add, the gayness sticks out like a pink thumb, becoming the explanation for all his motivations and actions. Blame our politicized attitudes towards sexuality, but there it is. I don't mean to suggest that gay characters (and certainly not gay people) have no complexity, but I think ambiguity should remain ambiguous.


Instead, my Merc became the Poet-Solipsist. He is the only character in the play for whom the Capulet-Montague feud is a matter of complete irrelevance; his rank as the Prince's kin puts him outside its purview, and unlike his cousin Paris, he has no intention of getting in. He regards the conflict as beneath his attention: "By my heel, I care not." If Mercutio can be said to be interested in anything, it is Freedom. He drinks when he wants to, parties when he wants to, mocks whomever crosses his path, and fights to put fighters in their place, not to be a Fighter. His concern for Romeo is that his obsession with Young Love will make a slave of him. The bulk of the Queen Mab is aimed at mocking the illogical unconcious that Romeo is so taken with. For the end of that speech, my director and I decided to make Merc come completely unglued; I decided that he speaks from experience, having shagged his share of Rosalines, perhaps leaving one pregnant, to meet a dark fate. Guilt and self-mockery thus overwhelm him; when he says "This is the hag/when maids lie on their backs/that presses them, and learns them first to bear/making them women of good carriage," the hag he means is at once the mythical Mab, the idea of Love, and himself.


But what, you say, of his duel with Tybalt? The Tybalt of our show was determined not to play him as the Black Knight of the Capulets, an inveterate bastard who loves no one and deserves his death at Romeos hands. In our reading of the script, we saw Tybalt as a Capulet-by-Marriage, who must constantly prove his loyalty to la famiglia. His dislike of Romeo is casual, but to his mind, decisive: Romeo broke the rules by crashing the Caps' banquet, he deserves punishment. In this fashion, Tybalt serves as the archetype not for the Villian, but for the Warrior.


That duel with Mercutio thus becomes a duel for Romeo's soul: will he be a Poet or a Warrior, a Laugher or a Fighter? Mercutio loses, both his life and his struggle, and Tybalt wins, though his victory devours him. The fact that Merc only dies because Romeo, eager to protect his friend's life from the Prince's death-to-duelists decree, steps in and leaves him open to a half-hearted thrust by Tybalt that Merc could easily have countered, but compounds the tragic irony. In seeking to protect his bon vivant friend, Romeo kills him, and makes himself the Death-Dealer, who takes Tybalt, Paris, and ultimately Juliet with him.


So that's our show, wounds coming from wounds leading to wounds, until the flowers die and everyone wakes up to a winter morn.

My Dear Wormwood

I have been reading The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis' twisted renderings of reverse theology. Hence, I have been laughing. At myself. Very hard. I wonder if I have a demon on my own shoulder. I will call him Suckblow. Get thee, behind me, thou infernal wanker!

God is Mocking Me...

And well do I deserve it. A friend of mine showed me this blog. I shudder at the similarities. Same idea, stared the same month, same color scheme until a few weeks ago. But he likes Howard Dean and Paul Krugman (He also manages to blog multiple posts a day on a regular basis...this stamina o'erwhelms me...)


So it appears I have a nemesis. What the hell, let's link him!

While we're in Schadenfreude Mode...

I enjoyed thoroughly the news that Tom Green's show was cancelled. I can't stand him. He's always been a annoying doofus with a one-joke schtick, but his talk show demonstrated that he basically has no sense of humor. I refer to the chainsaw incident, wherein Jesse James Dupree of Jackyl took a chainsaw to Tom's Desk.







He's a lumberjack...and he's okay....


I can't say that I would enjoy a hair-band refugee doing damage to my set, either. But then I haven't made a career of vandalism-and-other-public-disturbance as entertainment. The fact that he couldn't even maintain a professional demeanor for the rest of the program shows what a useless diva he truly was, and is. Carson, Letterman, or Leno would have laughed it off while the cameras ran and fumed afterwards. Tom has no such acting ability to fall back on. He will not be missed.

Barbara Streisand and I Agree on Something!

Her music.

Speaking Up

I tend to avoid commentary on the daily political ups and downs; most of the peckings and squabblings that make up a given day's "Political Roundup" are so frivolous as to be unworthy of any serious person's attention, and the rest are but the punditocracy rehashing old arguments. When a decision is made, a platform revealed, or a war launched, then I pay attention. Everything else is tedious.


However, today it occurred to me that the President has dropped down to a 50% approval for the first time since he's been in office. And why? Because the folks are getting jittery about the war, and the opposition is getting noisy. I cannot remain silent.


All of this comes of people with no knowledge of history, of how wars are fought, of how guerrilas are defeated. The key idea is patience. It doesn't happen overnight. The best way to beat guerrilas is to keep them occupied while you gradually improve the administration and daily lives of the majority of the citizenry. If you can cut them off from foreign sources of supply, all the better, but showing yourself to be an improvment over the guerrilas is the key thing. We have done so. Poll after poll of Iraqis has shown that they worry more about us leaving too soon than staying too long. As long as we continue to demonstrate commitment to Iraqi independence, to training and setting up police, border guards, soldiers, and bureaucrats, we aren't going to turn the people against us.


The question for now is, are the American people going to have the stomach for that? All I can say is, We'd Better. Withdrawing from Iraq before the Iraqis are capable of governing (and defending) themselves would be a disaster beyond counting. The terrorists (Baathist or Islamic) would soon undo the fledgling Iraqi republic, and declare their movement impervious to the worst the West could do. They'd declare us weaklings and cowards, unable to maintain a sustained struggle. If you think world opinion is against us now, just wait to see what would happen then.


Now is the time to recommit ourselves to a long and difficult struggle that must be won. Now is the time to stare the enemy in the eye and say You Will Not Bury Us, and mean it. Now is the time to stop flagellating ourselves for every human misery in the world; we did not cause them. Now is the time to dedicate as much of our blood and treasure as we can to mitigating those miseries, and destroying those that propagate them.


Go ahead and hate Bush if it makes you feel better; despise him for an inarticulate, cliché-spouting scion of privelege if your sense of superiority means so much to you. But recognize that he, faults and all, is our leader in a time when leadership is what is needed. And that, if the ability to make decisions and the will to see them through is of any value, we've had worse leaders. Focus on the good that can come of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Yes, it CAN work, the people there WANT DESPERATELY for it to work; so why can't we all work towards that goal, and pay the fascists and nihilists no more heed than the scope of a rifle requires?


I used to be quite taken with the writings of Ayn Rand; her clear sense of morality and sharp criticisms of the power-lust of the Left impressed me greatly. Now I am more critical of her work: the bell-ringing monotony of her fiction, her acidic disdain for spirituality or even simple kindness, her set-piece characters. Yet Rand, through the process of her writings, did uncover a useful truth: a civilization dies when it forgets why it lives, when it no longer cares to defend itself. Those of you who would criticize the current administration, who would shriek in fear at its War on Terror, need to come up with a viable alternative. Otherwise your victory will mean that we no longer care to defend ourselves. And that will mean death, to many individually, and to our dreams, collectively.

Bloody Code

I am aware that my archive pages have gone haywire. I don't know what's wrong, but I have the Blogger support team on the job. I await their advice.

Thought For the Day

I am well aware that it would be disengenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views: Candour will oblige us to admit, that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition that has made its appearance, or hereafter will make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable...




-Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist No. 1

I Get Mail

My mother writes to say that she still prefers her version of rock n' roll to mine. She is entitled to her opinion, especially as she'll always be my biggest fan writing-wise. But journalistic objectivity requires me to note that she gets down on the Rolling Stones after a big dinner, and I've seen her shake her hips to the Ramones version of "Do You Wanna Dance?" In Boogie Veritas.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Finally did the color-change I've long been thinking on. Finally changed the music links to reflect reality. My last Allzah.com review featured me whining about not being able to buy the music I want per my RIAA-related rant. While in borders today, I resolved to assuage my hunger and buy me some Black Flag. I bet that I could get a release on their original label and thus be free of corporate stickiness, and I was right: they didn't have Damaged, but I was able to pick up a compilation of their pre-Rollins days. So far, it's glorious hardcore punk, back before "hardcore" meant "guys who are too drunk to play metal." And it came with an SST records catalog, wherein I can buy Descendents and Minutemen. They're not the bands I'm trying to support, but they'll get me through the long night ahead.

The Inspired Mind

I have been reading The Reckless Mind by Mark Lilla, an account/criticism of various 20th century thinkers who have, one way or another, found themselves supporting tyranny, be it of the Marxist, Fascist, or even Islamic varieties. His focus seems strictly to be on European thinkers, which in one way can be limiting, but for me has provided a useful primer on the kind of philosophizing and politicking that's been going on across the Atlantic of late. Of course, to be serious I'm going to have to read more, and read more I plan to do. Hence my title.


I came to realize that there was much I did not know, and much that I recognize but have not read. Thus inspired, I went to Borders and attacked the familiar: The Federalist Papers, and The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, neither of which I've read. When that is done, I shall launch myself into the works of those I have casually dismissed on limited collegiate readings, such as Foucault, Derrida, and Chomsky. It is wise to know the ways of one's adversaries.

Thar She Blows

Isabel came and went, knocking branches about and getting the place wetter, but that's it. The only real damage this hurricane did was to Romeo & Juliet's performance schedule. As we are doing it at a local high school, the local school board ultimately had control over our use of the venue. They closed schools today, and would not reopen them for our use this evening. It's sunny out.


I hate bureaucracy.

Lies, And the Lying Liars Who Lie About Lies, While Lying that Lies aren't Lies, And Lying that Lies are Only Lies when Lying Liars Lie Them

No, I'm not going to make fun of Al Franken. He's as unworthy of my attention as Michael Moore or Ann Coulter, demonizers all. I'm going to direct you to a piece by Will Saletan of Slate, which is rapidly becoming the only left-leaning online mag worth reading (If for no other reason than they don't expect me to pay good money or watch commercials for the privelege of reading Joe Conason). Saletan does a workmanlike job of uncovering the faux-piety of Democrats shrill harping with regard to the other party, and closes with the following quotation:

Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that's your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you're interested in which wing lies more, you're probably not very interested in the truth.

Amen, brother, Amen.

The Dragon Stirs

Apparently the Chinese government has found it fitting to place 150,000 troops on the border with North Korea. Our governments think they might be pressuring the PRK on the weapons talk table, but perhaps not. The Chinese say they're looking to stop criminal activities by North Korean soldiers and/or slow the flow of refugees out of North Korea's worker's paradise.


So far, so typical. But check this out:

The Foreign Ministry statement said China's army also is taking over border-patrol duties from police on the frontier with Myanmar in the southwest, a major heroin-smuggling area.



The statement gave no reason, but Chinese police in the area say they are outgunned by drug gangs.

Now believing anything an official from the Chinese government says carries with it certain risks. But let us assume that the Chinese police are telling the truth. Suddenly it's not so difficult to remember similar episodes from China's past. I wonder how long the Communists shall keep the Mandate of Heaven?

And There Was Much Relief

Affleck and Lopez: Welcome to Splitsvile. Population: You.


And the tabloids will pause a second or two before finding a new pair of self-involved nitwits to exploit. And Casablanca is saved. Who says there's no God?

Proof that Stand-Up Comics Do Change the World

The President has signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Wendy McElroy has the details at FoxNews.com. I think it's safe to say that this is the sterotypical "Study Law Masquerading as a Bold Policy Initiative," but its a step in the right direction. And some study may be required. No problems there.


But a great many folk have been mumbling about this in the past, not just for its own merits, but because of a larger problem within our prison system. I've been thinking on it m'self, and not just because I've been listening to Johnny Cash. It has long been the conventional wisdom that our prisons make criminals worse through years of brutality.


These are my ideas:




1. Seperate the sheep from the wolves. Violent and non-violent offenders should go to seperate prisons. That's common sense, but that's not the way it happens. If this is logistically impossible, maybe we should reconsider whether incarceration is the right penalty for non-violent offenders. I think the usefulness of putting pot-heads in jail, for example, is apparent to all.


2. Let's put the "penitent" back in penitentiary. Prisons should not become a recruiting ground for tribal gangs. There shouldn't be any gangs. There shouldn't be, among violent offenders, any social contact with one another whatsoever. They don't eat together, they don't sleep together, they don't talk to each other. They need human contact? Talk to the chaplain, a psychologist, or an instructor. They need something to do? Give 'em a library. No more gyms, no more cable TV, no more movies. Those are priveleges of free men and women. Their punishment is to spend years alone with themselves and their crime. That's tougher on criminals than dropping the soap in the shower could ever be (while I'm on that subject, seperate bathrooms).


3. Let's get serious about rehabilitation. Say it with me: Education. Technical instruction. If we cut down on the social interaction and the gang life sufficiently, they'll be begging for something to occupy their brains. Let's make sure nobody gets out of prison without a useful job skill. Preferably blue-collar, as such may serve them best in an urban environment, but if an uncovered savant wants to learn something else, let him do so. The point is, time devoted to positive pursuits should not only be encouraged, they should be the only kind of pursuit allowed.




It's been said many times that a society is judged on how it treats its prisoners. I've never agreed that such is the case, and I'm not even sure it should be the case (how about the way it treats, oh, EVERYBODY ELSE instead?). However, when our prisons become savage wastelands, that's not good for anyone. The moral compass of the West demands better.

In Other News...

Hurrican Isabel is headed towards my neck of the woods. The eye should be over my house by Thursday night. Is this what Noah felt like?

Quelle Surprise!

A suprisingly fair editorial in the Post on Sunday, all the more so for it's seemingly hostile title. Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser to the French Institute for International relations, says that there is a limit to what military might can accomplish (true as far as it goes), but also points out that French picque is no more constructive than American belligerence. Now is the time, Moïsi says, for the French to step in, as allies. So far, I am in accord with her, as both of us are "not convinced that the French alternative would be any more successful than the American."




Even more interesting, Moïsi makes reference to the French "trauma" in Algeria. I am confused by her take, though: she seems to imply that it was the extended occupation of the capital, Algiers, that doomed the French effort. My understanding was that it was the ignorant rabble-rousing of the French Left, coupled with first the poor leadership of the Fourth Republic and then the cynical calculations of De Gaulle (who'd decided that France's future lay in the EEC, not in Africa) that rendered null what would otherwise been among the most successful counterguerrilla campaigns in modern history. Truly, in Algeria the French pulled defeat from the jaws of victory, and suffered two attempted military coups as a result of it. While I feel that true Franco-American concordance on Iraq would be to the benefit of all concerned, let us not read the wrong lessons from history.




Nit picked. Happy Monday.

Johnny Cash

It doesn't seem all that sad to me. The old boy was 71 when he died early this morning. He's lived a life full of success and good works, a man admired, despite his shortcomings, by many music fans. Sure, it's rotten luck that he died just as he was breaking through to a new generation of fans (I had 15-year-olds saddened by the loss today), but the man's already hung on well past the prime and time of all those other Sun Records cats, flashes-in-the-pan like Jerry Lee Lewis and that Elvis chap. What wierded me out more today was hearing that John Ritter dropped dead of a heart condition that no one even knew about. That to me is truly creepy. One minute you're happily working on the set of your new hit show, the next minute, you're worm food. Poor guy.

But Ritter will always be Jack Tripper, a harmless but otherwise forgettable character. Cash will always be the Man in Black, a Walking Contradiction. He was as religious a man as one might find, and sang heartfelt songs about Peace in the Valley, but he has also gone through years and years of drug abuse. He bowed to no man in love of his country, and presumably all the good old-fashioned ideals it was founded on, yet he would routinely play prisons and sing songs to the prisoners that suggested that putting people in prison was not the smartest idea. I have a copy of his performance at San Quentin Prison in California, and he sings a song to riotous cheers that condemns San Quentine and, implicitly, the entire penal system as designed in hell and belonging back there. Then, he sings it again. When Eminem grows the cojones to try anything like that, lemme know.

I'd go on, but folk with a more extensive appreciation of the man's recordings have already sounded off (here's one example). I've only really discovered him recently, based on the strenght of two LP's I bought. He is to me, as he is I suspect to many others, the Miles Davis of country music: the one guy from a genre you don't like that you can listen to and enjoy.

My problem with country isn't that it's redneck music. Credence Clearwater Revival were the biggest rednecks that ever walked the earth, and I can listen to them all day. Same with Lewis, Elvis, or any of those guys. Nor am I hung up on the insistent Christianity and patriotism of the genre. I am Christian and patriotic myself. No, my problem is that what gets called country music, especially the Nashville scene, is boring, gutless, garish redneck music, all sparkle and sequins and hoots (I'm not touching the "pop-country" guys who dress like Nirvana or Britney but still play banjos. Everybody but the teenagers seems to agree they're poseurs).

It's just not my scene, the songs, like the people, are too duded-up. I sat through some Country Music Awards show and saw with my own eyes, some pompadoured dingbat in a tourquoise suit make fun of the newer garage-rock bands, in a snide little song with appropriately wussy riffs called "The Next Big Thing." Had I the power, I would have lept through the screen and strangled him with his guitar strap, and not a jury in the world would have convicted me (provided I managed to get the trial staged in one of those counties on the coast that voted for Gore; in Nashville they'd probably lynch me before I finish the job). Fortunately, I was distracted by my mother proclaiming in her most serious voice that country music was the only form of rock n' roll left. I rolled my eyes so hard I could see the back of my skull and left the room (I later pressed on her some of my Vines and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion CD's; she never listened to them).

The point is, Johnny Cash was above such petty antics. For him, country music was about laying down the roots of white rural music, with it's fiddlin' and hummin, it's frontier fear and bravado, and never about getting "Yee-haws!" at the Grand ol' Opry. He was an artist in the best sense of the world, rendering creation that reflected experience; as genuinely concerned with prisoner's rights as he was with praising God and America. None of it was phony; none of it was show-biz. You can argue in the post-grunge world that being "not show-biz" is every bit as big a ploy as being "show-biz", but Cash didn't come from the post-grunge world. He came from the time where dressing in black all day was frowned upon. That middle finger he took out in a newspapers after he won his Grammy, aimed right at Nashville, wasn't a media splash to sell records. It was Johnny Cash saying "Fuck you," as loud as he possibly could.

So fare well, Johnny. Here's hopin' you got enough points to escape that ring of fire that seemed to worry you so much.

9-11

I hadn't intended to even mention it. Two years ago today, I was at home, having been dismissed, eyes glued to the TV screen, watching the towers fall over and over again. I didn't shout, I didn't spit, I didn't grumble about Arabs or foreigners or anybody else. But I was seething inside. Never had I seen such a thing as this, in my land, in my lifetime: an act of war. The cruelty of it, mixed with the joyous fervor that those who perpetrated it and those who support them doubtless felt, yielded a sense of horrible wrongness that I made a point not to forget. But I was that day, even as everyone, myself included, blithered and shook, confident: I knew we would respond, and vigorously.


One year ago, we took stock in our classroom, and a teacher showed slides, and played some bit of ethereal melancholia in the background. I'd thought myself inured to the whole affair. The Taliban had crumbled and we were getting ready to put the move on Saddam; the situation had improved. But I found myself looking into the eyes of students who responded to the images with tears, and then I responded similarly. My voice choked, and all the sadness I never permitted myself to feel was upon me. I got through it, but at the end of the school day was in chapel, stifling sobs, asking God if this was what it felt like.


And at that moment I wasn't referring to 9-11 but every last 9-11 that had ever streaked its red trail across the earth. I thought of every last battle, every last raid, every invasion of the brutal onto the peaceful. Every bomber run. Every Rape of Nanking. Every Klansman riding out of the night.


Today, I walk neither in fury nor sadness. I feel nothing about this particular day, excepting that I remember what this day has come to mean. There are those who wish that we would wrap up and forget about the Attack, sweep them under the rug, get over it. You'll hear them express annoyance that anyone would want to remember the event. They think it gross, obsessive, that we should want to comemmorate the dead and renew our commitment to preventing such a thing. Yes, it was terrible, but...they'll say, just as so many said Yes, it's terrible but...before even the second tower had fallen. They are entitled to their opinion, and I can sympathize with their motive, if their motive is indeed not to relive horror, not to fill ourselves with the lust for vengeance.


I sympathize, but I do not agree. While our soldiers risk their lives in Iraq and elsewhere, we ought to remember why they are doing so. Reasonable people can disagree as to the wisdom of our current efforts, but to do so without referring to the context that produced it is foolish. Bill Clinton, chastizing his party after the 2002 elections, said that the people would sooner vote for someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right. He's half correct. The left seems determined to forget or downplay 9-11, and I don't necessarily think that this is entirely due to immediate political considerations. I don't think they have language in their vocabulary to deal with the event, which is why everything is prefaced with "Oh, yes, it was an awful thing, but..." They don't want to deal with it seriously, as a violent act which must be responded to in a stern manner. They want to mitigate it, explain it away, turn the response against ourselves, imply without ever standing firm on the statement that we deserved it, make sure that every last UN member agrees to every arrest, make them quietly without waving any flags of any kind and then get back to the important things, like making Social Security more bankrupt. Just remember, while listening to Dean's and Kerry's and Lieberman's sallies at our current president's handling of the anti-terror campaign: that it is now two years since the Twin Towers fell, and the Left has presented no alternatives to the Bush strategy. Vague calls to be less arrogant, yes. Brainless denunciations of Bush, yes. But no alternatives. They have no plan, and no intention of developing one. They really do wish that the whole thing would just go away.


I hadn't intended to make this a political attack, but what was the Attack itself if not political in nature? This is the real stuff of politics, the only thing that Kings and Presidents have ever done well. All the tax debates and culture-baiting and mounds of papers we create and wave at each other as though they possessed magical powers are but frivolities to distract us while history naps. The Founders didn't write the Constitution so that we could have slapfights about imaginary trust funds, but so that our liberties wouldn't be torn apart by internal divisions or torn from us by foreign threats. One of the latter has so attempted, and on this second anniversary of that, I remember my rage and my sorrow, and quietly pray for that foreign threat's defeat and destruction.

New Link!

Here's a Brown University junior's blog: Neo-Liberal for Life. One might presume that "neoliberal" means "non-Sovietized left-winger" and so far this fellow's stuff indicates a certain disgust with the dogma of the hard left. I have always known that such folk have existed; indeed, most liberals tend to be just as unassuming: rather than spew vitriol or push an explicitly socialist agenda, they regard their ideology as a necessary corrective to what would otherwise be a tyrannical, laissez-faire society. This chap makes me wonder if some liberals and democrats are waking up to the fact that "corrective" has its own heart of darkness.




I'm posting a lot for someone who isn't posting, aren't I?

There Are More Things 'Twixt Heaven and Earth Than are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy

Guess what else causes hitherto unrealized amounts of greenhouse gases? Fungus.

Hell Week

Romeo and Juleit opens on Friday, so this week is going to be lived at the theater. I may pop in now and again if anything earth-shaking happens, but other than that, I'll see you on the other side.

St. Miles

Yesterday I left a Thelonious Monk CD on at low volume during one of my classes. I liked the effect so much that Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" was providing a modal counterpoint to all of today's lectures. Tommorrow I may try classical. We'll see if music really does stimulate the kiddies...

WHO CARES?

While I'm swiping at net-journalists I admire greatly, I really wish Matt Drudge would stop running the sirens everytime some Hollywood motormouth says a bunch of nasty things about America or the administration. Today it's Johnny Depp. Tommorrow it'll be Elijah Wood, or somebody else. I don't care what any one of them says. Not a one of them is qualified to discuss such matters, and I'm sick to death of them getting headlines while I, who have studied International Relations at great personal expense, have only this piddling blog. Once again, I expect the mainstream media to listen raptly to our Morning Stars, but Drudge is supposed to have an eye to the main chance. Come on, people. I want meat, not gruel.

Son of Wobbly

Sully shoots back at his critics, and seemingly me (though I flatter myself not that he reads this eyehole of a blog), regarding his stance on the war. His points are fair: he's a genuine supporter of the President and "fear[s] that he's going astray." I agree that this war, like most wars, is too important a matter to be left to the Democrats (Dean and Kerry, the most hawkish, have nothing to say but "we'd do it better," which is both unenlightening and unlikely), and that those of us, like Sullivan, who understand that importance need to make sure that Dub stays in office, and fair criticism is appropriate to that.


But giving into the hysteria isn't going to help Dub out, as all it does is add fuel to the Dean-Kerry bonfire. Whenever I get news of another explosion/death in Iraq, I run it through the prism of the last guerrilla war we successfully put down, in the Phillipines, 100 years ago. That particular war was 2 or 3 years in the finishing, after we spent a year making fools of ourselves with classically inept sweep-and-clear-and-stumble-into-ambushes-and-abuse-the-population tactics, against an enemy (Aquinaldo) who was far less of a beast than Saddam, and in a country whose ethnic map makes Iraq look like Idaho. There were many butcheries before we won, but win we did, because we gradually made good on our promises and became the better alternative to Aguinaldo, who gradually made himself inimical. The progress was slow and didn't make the headlines, but sure.


It's not a perfect analogy, but the point is that we have to be sure that we're seeing the forest for the trees. One of the best things about Sully during the war was his ability to grasp what was really going on as opposed to what the CNN/NPR/NYT axis was constructing. Let's not let the terrorists impress us with their infantile explosions, horrible though they be. Let's let the Anaconda work.


In conclusion, and in fairness to Sullivan: no, you haven't precisely gone wobbly. We only nag at you, old boy, because we dare not lose you.

Gone Wobbly

A month I wait for Andrew Sullivan to return and put everything so and thusly in that inimitable style of his, and this is what I get? The Aircraft carrier landing is now "the dumbest political gesture of the last two years?" I am plumb positive that wasn't Sully's assessment at the time. Wait, I've checked the archives, and he said it was "a bit hubristic." I stand corrected. I guess one is entitled to one's exaggeration, non sequitor though it be.


On the same token, he's joining the parade of doom-and-gloomers re: Iraq. Behold, the administration is no longer "serious," the shiites and Sunnis are about to explode, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. Exactly what has happened that is going to undo all that we have accomplished so far? I expect this dreck from the New York Times, but not from you, Sully. Either a) a month for you in P-Town is way too long, or b) when headlines blare, you really are just a...journalist.