More Sontag

Christopher Hitchens writes his own Sontag obituary.

Susan Sontag, R.I.P.

Her influence on me was subtle and formidable. Disgard her novels as curiosities; I will pass over her infamous remarks on the 9-11 attacks. Just buy Against Interpreation or Styles of Radical Will.

One task [of the intellecutal], is to promote dialogue, support the right of a multiplicity of voices to be heard, strengthen skepticism about received opinion. This means standing up to those whose idea of education and culture is the imprinting of ideas ("ideals") such as the love of the nation or tribe.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

The U.S. vs the EU

Francis Fukayama reviews Timothy Garton Ash's "Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West," which, in the spirit of Robert Kagan's useful "Of Paradise and Power", argues that the sociopolitical and cultural differences between the EU and America may be permanent and irreconcilable. Link. Fukayama writes:

But the perceived legitimacy of the American role depends entirely on its being successful. You will be regarded as a leader if you break Serbian power without suffering a single casualty; you will be regarded as an arrogant unilateralist if you fail to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or get bogged down in a guerrilla insurgency. For Tony Blair, the cost of being associated with George W. Bush has been so high as to put into question the ability of any future British prime minister to be so protective of the “special relationship” with the United States.

Due to some technical difficulties this post will show up as an Andy post. It was actually posted by Alfred.

Get Your 2005 Great American Conservative Women Calendar!

They're Barbie doll bland and as interesting in conversation as their male counterparts. In short: unboyfriendable. Link.

A Grand Illusion is curious. Which of these women would you rather boink? I know that each one them is repulsive in myriad ways, but you know, if you had to choose.

Ann Coulter


Condoleezza Rice


Phyllis Schlafly (left)


Shemane Nugent


Laura Schlessinger


Michelle Malkin


Monica Crowley

"Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?"

I direct you to a very good post on the subject on Alas, a Blog.

FBI memo on prisoner abuses

In PDF. Notice how the FBI carefully differentiates between their procedural limits, which they say they never breached, and the much looser ones of the president's executive order.

I can't stop looking at this picture.

The sarcasm point

Is it wrong of me to think this might be a good idea?

It is time for the adoption of the sarcasm point. Why the sarcasm point? We have a mark that conveys that we mean or know something. We have one that says it with volume and force! We have one that communicates that we don't know something, don't we? We need one more: to do for language what shade did for drawing, what color did for television, and what eyebrows did for expressions—introduce finesse.

Don't knock it until you've seen it in action:

Believe it or not, the world we've landed in is not only more image-obsessed than we've ever been. It's also more text-based than ever. We finger-type and we thumb-type. We e-mail, we IM, we blog. And the forms cannot contain the content. There's a dastardly disconnect. Among other things, it makes Dave Barry columns somewhat difficult to read. Someone must step into the sarcasm chasm¡

I'm serious¡ See, there are people who are relentlessly sincere. So, what are they supposed to do when they're trying to sound a bit bitter? Suppose you're IM'ing that oft-earnest friend you have, and he writes: "I need to go to church tomorrow and confess the jealousy in my heart." You forget—have you ever heard him say nice things about God or do the opposite? "Wait … do you really?" "Sorry. I mean, I need to go to church tomorrow¡ To confess my jealousy¡ And the fact that I just renewed my subscription to Maxim¡" "Oh. Me too. Only as a Jew, I must do these things in synagogue¡"

I'm going to start using this sarcasm point--as an experiment. I'm serious. Notice the lack of sarcasm. Man, this is great¡

Anyway, for those who are technically challenged: alt+173.

The WP finally buys Slate:

Weisberg pronounced himself "delighted" with the move. "Microsoft has been a great place for us for the last 8-1/2 years," he said, but "it was a tough place to develop our business because it wasn't a media company and doesn't want to be a media company. They're really big and we're really small. The joke was always that we're almost a rounding error, but a rounding error probably exaggerated our status."

The Vietnam parallel is becoming harder and harder to dismiss...

...but I still don't buy it.

I think I heard on CNN this morning that the Mosul attack was some kind of artillery barage. I forget the actual military term. But the NYT article, which is unusually vague, makes no mention of it:

A powerful explosion ripped through an American military base in northern Iraq today, causing many casualties, the American military said.
A short announcement from the military said the explosion occurred at noon Iraqi time near the city of Mosul, scene of raids by insurgents on police stations in the past six weeks.

Bull Moose has the most eloquent post to date on the Vietnam connection:

And as days pass, Donald "I don't do condolence letters"Rumsfeld bears a striking resemblance to Robert Strange McNamara. Moreover, the current Texan in the White House also clearly sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The Moose agrees with those who believe that the primary difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that the latter is far more strategically important. America can't afford a failed state in that critical region. Let's hope that this time history does not repeat itself as tragedy or farce.

Hippies

Christopher Hitchens wrote up Eleanor Agnew's "Hippies," a memoir in which the author analyzes how world-historic events turned into iconography suitable for Madison Avenue marketers. I like the modulated irony of his conclusion:

Meanwhile, though, the anti-globalization movement has started to reject modernity altogether, to set its sights on laboratories and on the idea of the division of labor, and to adopt symbols from Fallujah as the emblems of its resistance. Conservatism cannot and does not, despite itself, remain static. It mutates into something far more reactionary than anything from which the hippies were ever fleeing.

O'Reilly got it right this time

Bill O'Reilly's indictment is right. I am boycotting Christmas.

A Grand Illusion is starting a petition to rename--or rechristen--Christmas National Have Homosexual Sex with an Atheist While Injecting Heroin into the Arm of a 9 Year Old Boy Singing La Marseillaise Day. Now that wily O'Reilly is on to me, I will have to cease my rampant anti-Americanism. And I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for that meddling turkey gobblerered talking head and his cable news network.

Wolcott on Carlson

James Wolcott has a very good post on MSNBC recruiting the insufferable Tucker Carlson:

If liberal opinions and interests are going to be blacked out from cable news, maybe liberal guests and viewers should boycott and let conservative monopolize the conversation amongst themselves, which is what they want to do anyway.

Cable debate shows are becoming a choice between people I hate and people who don't make me vomit.

I'm curious who CNN is going to hire to replace Carlson on Crossfire. I say go with Jonah Goldberg. He's not as good looking as Tucker--but then again, who is?--but he's just as annoying. Yeah, replace him with Jonah Goldberg wearing a monocle and an ascot to continue the outdated fashion trend.

Obligatory Sullivan derision

Throw what you will at Andrew Sullivan, and there're plenty of opportunities for mockery, but one is rather unimpeachable: he’s not a very good writer.

From Time:

One word brought together the disparate events of 2004: insurgency. It's a strange term — but we've got quite used to it. Think of it as not quite a revolution but more than mere discontent. The dictionary describes it as "a condition of revolt against a recognized government that does not reach the proportions of an organized revolutionary government." Yep, a war that is not a real war, a halfway, inconclusive revolt without end, a battle of attrition that polarizes as it goes essentially nowhere.

For Bill Safire, retirement from the NYT also entails a complete estrangement from the realm of reason and reality. Read his latest column where Bill concocts an alternate reality so impossible that he pitches it as the sequel to Roth's The Plot Against America. (I very much doubt senile Safire has read the book; I think he just liked the title.) Then he goes on to argue against it with much aplomb. Next in Safire's itinerary will be entering ass-kicking contests where he will be the only two-legged participant and other aphoristic likes.

I'm going to make this post brief since I'm mired in housework and haven't had time to catch up on the day's news:

Many thanks to Charles Perez over at The Fulcrum for linking us. Check out his blog--it's a good one.

If you want to read something truly disgusting and ignorant and plain old nauseating, check out this letter to the FCC from the suburban fascists of the American Family Association on AMERICABlog.

Jokerman

Not political, but a terrific Bob Dylan interview by Kurt Loder in 1984. This is my way of promoting "Chronicles," his surprisingly terrific first volume of memoirs.

"It takes more than a bullet to stop a Bull Moose"

Or the round up:

The always informative and amusing Bull Moose has a very good post on Republican bickering after the election. Check it.

Digby got his hands on what appears to be George and Laura Bush's christmas card. Nevermind. It's a joke card--and I feel devoid of all humor as well as observational ability.

And Frank Rich is on a roll.

One quick link

This is a fascinating idea for a class.

a quick word

It's going to be a busy day for me so blogging will be slow. I'm going to leave most of the posting to our new contributor, Alfred Soto. Alfred teaches English at Florida International University and is also the assistant director of student media--needless to say, his views do not reflect the university's... thankfully--and a close and valued friend. We're lucky to have him here at A Grand Illusion.

I'm working on having a profile section on the side bar for all Illusionites, as well as redesigned and fancier nameplate, but they won't be up for a couple of days.

Also, I'd like to remind you to visit Left2Right and support them by participitating in their debates and so on.

Was Abraham Lincoln gay?

Well, the book is finally out. I'll have to read it myself, I guess. But casually using the word "gay" and "homosexual" to describe a mode of behavior or pathology that didn't exist in the mid nineteenth century is reductive. Even more reductive is the banal assertion by Jean Baker in today's NYT story:

Ms. Baker said that his outsider status would explain his independence and his ability to take anti-Establishment positions like the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. As a homosexual, she said, "he would be on the margins of tradition."

That Lincoln may have had same-sex escapades as a young man is likely: most young men, then and now, did too. But the eagerness by homosexual activists (like Larry Kramer) to turn this this theorizing into a lament for what the Republican party has become strikes this homosexual as overheated. Kramer's comment has to be read to be believed.

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars

From NYT:

Because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.

Adding insult to injury might be the ineluctable Oliver Stone movie.

In other news, the good people at Left2Right have started linking A Grand Illusion. Many thanks!

What happened? Zell Miller didn't want to pass up on the big bucks he's going to be making over at Fox. Considering this is as close to the White House as his ever going to get, maybe Lieberman is not that big of a Putz after all:

The Cabinet vacancy at the Department of Homeland Security was the subject of the latest overture, according to congressional and other government sources. Those sources said the earlier overture was to see whether Lieberman might be interested in becoming the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Nah, he's still a putz. That gives me an idea for the future: Top Ten Reasons Why Lieberman is a putz.

I stole this from Josh Marshall

It appears Lynne Cheney wrote a lesbian romance novel--recently adapted for the stage in the East Village--in 1981, which I didn't know. I think everyone should own a copy of the book but it's out of print. (Amazon is selling one used copy for a whopping $500!) I hereby declare that A Grand Illusion is starting a petition to bring back this poignant epic of woman on woman action in the American frontier.

Bill Kristol, a neocon in good standing, has been a consistent thorn in the Bush administraton's side (and not just this Bush; he didn't get along very well with Pappy either). Check out the bitchslap he gives Rumsfeld in today's WP.

Visit Left2Right for a nice discussion on the media and its responsibilities in educating society--especially in our society which seems to be ripe with pandemic ignorance. Anyhow my argument is that it's probably asking a lot of "the media," without resorting to some Habermas type model of deliberative democracy where EVERYONE shares the burden of this critical review.

Politics aside...

Read this intelligent dichotomy on It's a Wonderful Life and The Dead by Amanda Marcotte of Mouse Words fame.

The best piece of news for the day

http://cnn.aimtoday.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20041214%2F0801587608.htm&photoid=20041026LON99

I say it's between that and McCain saying he has no faith in Rumsfeld. It's a tough one.

More foreign papers!

From Al Sabaah:

The moral level for the elections requires averting enraging, defamation, charging and relying on external factors away of political operation in addition to averting drawing the electoral process and misleading voters into other issues.

If only our system were this civil.

An old--but very relevant--article in TNM about my favorite article.

The Cuban papers always make for great reading

An edict from Raul Castro, published in today's Granma, declaring the commencement of some sort of military exercise:

For many years our principal proposition has been to avoid war while being aware that the only way to prevent aggression is by making it patent that, in such a case, Cuba will become an enormous wasps’ nest that no aggressor will be able to resist, however powerful that enemy might be. In the end it will have to withdraw, bloodied and defeated, because this would be a War of All the People.

Ah yes, perpetual war for perpetual peace indeed. My favorite paragraph however is the following:

The quality of work previously carried out make it possible to affirm that the conditions have been created so that this important exercise can take place. Now it the time to work with maximum efficiency and creativity.

Apparently maximum efficiency and creativity do not carry over to Raul's writing.

Spam, spam, spam!

I new Monty Python musical directed by Mike Nichols.

Much love, Mr. Diaz.

You're lucky I've had an exceptionally productive writing day.

For those who read presidential biographies, I direct you to Jean Edward Smith's "Grant," an exceptionally thorough defense of one of the greatest generals in modern warfare and putatively one of our worst presidents. Smith's pedantic approach is oftennumbing: the chapters dealing with Grant's great victories (Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg) lack any dramatic interest; compare Smith to Grant's own written accounts and you'll note the difference between descriptoin and evocation.

Smith also fails to address Grant's drinking. He's too quick to dismiss some of the more famous stories (falling off horses, etc) as apocryphal, and I just don't buy it: some of those rumours just had to be true. Smith is so obsessed with emphasizing Grant's heroic qualities that he too rarely rebukes him for his obvious character flaws. Granite-like intensity and sureness of mind are awesome virtues, but as president these qualities produced questionable Cabinet secretaries whose corruption was so shameless that Grant's name was forever sullied by historians.

All that said, he does a marvelous job rehabilitating Grant's presidency. The record is astonishing. In so many instances Grant's prescience astounds: his genuine concern for Native Americans; willingness to use Federal power (and more adeptly than Eisenhower would later do) to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; his understanding of how inflation would deflate an exploding American economy. Most fascinating, he and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish brokered the Treaty of Washington, which, among other things, was resposnible for the Anglo-American friendship which persists today. And if you consider how selflessly Grant would lobby for all these things himself – protocol be damned – you have a Chief Executive of first-rate character.

gore Vidal and Edmund wilson had already whetted my appetite for Grant's "Personal Memoirs" (Gertrude Stein said it was one of her favorite books). Smith has now compelled me to purchase an early Christmas present.

It's Koufax time! Do they have one for most obscure blog? 'Cause I got that one in the bag.

My two first wives

Kerik just doesn't cease to amuse.

What the fuck is wrong with Mickey Kaus?

Here's an instance where the convenient case for public figure privacy in matters of sex--made most conveniently by Clinton himself, but also by Jeffrey Toobin,*** Andrew Sullivan, etc.--completely breaks down. It turns out to be fairly important whether Clinton was or wasn't not having sexual relations with Denise Rich, Marc's glamorous ex-wife, who lobbied for the pardon... Someday some historian will focus on this interpersonal causal chain and win a National Book Award for his provocative thesis--as Philip Weiss memorably put it, "Follow the nookie." But if reporters had been more irresponsible in reporting on Clinton's personal life--and less cowed by the Stephanopouloses and Carvilles--actual voters would have had this highly relevant information in real time when they made their decision in 1992. ... P.S.: Do Democrats really want to elect the woman who let all this happen under her nose? Just asking!

I love the implication that someone in the future is going to win the National Book Award because of his nonsensical idea that Clinton was having sex with Rich's wife and that's why he pardoned him. Now, if you're having an affair with someone's wife, wouldn't you want to keep that person far far away? You know, just asking!

This is the best news I've heard all day.

From NYT:

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted Monday for the kidnapping of nine dissidents and the killing of one of them during his 1973-90 regime, and the former dictator was placed under house arrest.

This definitely challenges the schadenfreude I felt after Castro took a nosedive.

Sic semper tyrannis! Well, not to Lincoln but... you know what I mean. Hopefully.

I definitely need all the blogging advice I can get since my hit numbers aren't what you would call flattering. WP article by Mike Peed on starting a successful blog. As Roger Ailes says, I can't wait to read Mike's blog.

Check out my book review in today's Miami Herald.

If only we could get one of these brains in the White House.

Blogal Warming

I found this (realclimate.org/) on Josh Marshall's blog. (He posted about it at 3:42 a.m. at which time the subject must have seemed exhilarating.)

Regardless, the site is interesting enough to merit a mention and permanent link.

On an unrelated note: I should get some lunch.

It's always ourselves we find in the blogosphere

I thought it was funny to find this on a Philly blog. I think Miami residents in general are happy that Bill Kamal is going to jail for attempted child molestation--especially those who are already in jail waiting for him to arrive. Maybe I should stop reading Wonkette lest I turn every post into a treatise on sodomy.

Creepy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1369644,00.html

Good column by Frank Rich:

Ms. Wood was being asked about that on "Crossfire" because a new Congressional report, spearheaded by the California Democrat Henry Waxman, shows that various fictions of junk science (AIDS is spread by tears and sweat, for instance) have turned up as dogma in abstinence-only sex education programs into which American taxpayers have sunk some $900 million in five years. Right now this is the only kind of sex education that our government supports, even though science says that abstinence-only programs don't work - or may be counterproductive. A recent Columbia University study found that teens who make "virginity pledges" to delay sex until marriage still have premarital sex at a high rate (88 percent) rivaling those that don't, but are less likely to use contraception once they do. It's California, a huge blue state that refuses to accept federal funding for abstinence-only curriculums, that has a 40 percent falloff in teenage pregnancy over the past decade, second only to Alaska.

Get your head out of Sharon's ass Safire!

Is that Bill Safire a schmuck or what? In today's NYT, he extolls Bush for this quote:

"Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a settlement. This approach has been tried before without success. As we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy."

Of course this is rhetorical wink wink nudge nudge, for Israel has something close to carte blanche--if not the thing itself--and the Palestinians need to pick a leader who will take the best deal Israel is willing to offer which is usually no deal at all. Oh yes, we're on a road to nowhere. Also, what Bush and Safire fail to mention is that Arafat, horrible as he was, was democratically elected in 1996.

Democracy in Palestine does not automatically mean a peace deal. Israel needs to be willing to dismantle the majority of the settlements in the West Bank or offer some kind of compensation to the Palestinians in exchange for those it intends to keep. Safire seems to think that a Palestinian East Jerusalem is off the table, and it probably is. But not because Arafat decided to go to war, which is Safire's explanation, but because Ariel Sharon sabotaged the peace talks to get himself elected.

And I don't want to hear any more about violence. There's commensurate violence on all sides. (Even that is a little unfair to the Palestinians since they've lost three times more people than the Israelis in the last intifada but I'd rather not count bodies.) The ridiculousness of the road map is that it required that Palestinians denounce violence but it didn't have a similar provision for Israelis. And that's my rant on the Middle East.

Rumstud answers questions from soldiers in Kuwait

From NYT:

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.
Rumsfeld replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as
humanly possible.
And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still)
be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

Everything can be blown up Rummie. The trick is to make the vehicles, you know, not as easy to blow up. The soldiers understand this simple concept. If scrap metal from junk yards is saving some lives, imagine how many more would be saved by proper armor.

Praise for Graham

Bull Moose ponders the question "is it possible to believe that the war in Iraq was unwise and remain a hawk?" this morning. And offers this answer:

The short answer, of course it is. But nevertheless, much of the left is weak on the question of the over-all war against Islamist jihadism. The prime example of an anti-war hawk, however, is retiring Senator Bob Graham of Florida. Indeed, Senator Graham was a prophet about much of what transpired in this war. From the beginning, he did not believe that Iraq was the menace of the Administration's claims.

But, Graham is far from a dove. He has argued that the main threat in this war comes from two primary sources - Saudi funding of extremists and Iran along with their allies in Hezbollah. Ironically, Iran may emerge as the big winner in the war as they extend their influence over the Shia majority in Iraq.

They're right. Graham has had an almost eerie prescience throughout this whole affair. It's a little saddening that he couldn't make that work for him in the primaries.