UGLY IS AS UGLY WAS: That’s the title of an article on James Lileks, in the Washington Post.
Archive for 2005
January 20, 2005
BOWLING FOR HYPOCRISY:
NEW YORK — Filmmaker Michael Moore’s (search) bodyguard was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon in New York’s JFK airport Wednesday night. . . .
Burke is licensed to carry a firearm in Florida and California, but not in New York. Burke was taken to Queens central booking and could potentially be charged with a felony for the incident.
Moore’s 2003 Oscar-winning film “Bowling for Columbine” criticizes what Moore calls America’s “culture of fear” and its obsession with guns.
Shades of Rosie O’Donnell.
UPDATE: And not just Rosie. Here’s a roundup of gun-control fans busted for gun violations on the part of their bodyguards.
ANOTHER UPDATE: MooreWatch reports that the story quoted above is wrong.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: I’m not a comics geek at all, but to bring an Amazon order up to the “free shipping” level I added these Uncle Scrooge comics, which I remember from when I was a kid. (For some reason, they, along with Mad magazine, were easy to come by when we lived in Germany, while most others were not). There are probably interesting sociological points to be made regarding Scrooge’s portrayal, but I’ll have to make them another time, as the Insta-Daughter (who is normally indifferent to comics) grabbed them immediately.
UPDATE: Reader Robert McNair emails:
Hosanna!! Another Uncle Scrooge fan. The finest character in the history of comics. My mind still reels at the genius of the diving board over the pool filled with money. If only.
Yes, the “money bin” was always amusing.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails a link to this essay explaining why Scrooge McDuck offers valuable lessons in capitalism to America’s youth. Perhaps it’s time for a revival.
MORE: Dave Kopel emails:
The reason that Uncle Scrooge comics were so easy to get in Germany in your childhood is that Scrooge benefits as an auxilliary of Donald Duck. DD comics were, and are, very big in Germany. I read them to brush up on the small amount of German I know. When I was in Germany last September, I could buy Donald Duck anthologies, in German, at a gas station.
There’s a famous book by a Chilean author which explains Donald Duck’s popularity in Latin America as an example of imperialism, with all sorts of embedded capitalist messsages.
If you were unfortunate enough to be a Cultural Studies professor, you would almost certainly have read the book.
Let’s toast my good fortune, I guess. After all, all sorts of other academics are jealous of law professors and our perquisites.
And from the article that Kopel links, this bit: “Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck have morphed into Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel.” And which Disney character would have best fit Dan Rather, I wonder . . .?
STILL MORE: I guess I’ve got better taste than I realized. Reader Garnet Fraser emails:
I’m just a regular reader and comics fan, but you may want to know that the Scrooge comics (created by Carl Barks) are among the best-regarded stuff in the whole history of the medium. If your French is up to it, check out this comics exposition devoted to them this month at Angouleme, amid Europe’s biggest art-comics convention:
My French isn’t good (I never studied it except briefly in preparation for visiting, and at best it’s on a par with the Google translation) but it’s nice to see that the richest duck in the world is getting attention. And the French need him, I think.
MORE STILL: Wyatt’s Torch: “I grew up on Scrooge Mcduck—in his later incantation as the afterschool show Ducktales. I have trouble finding words to describe the influence this show had on me growing up.”
WI-FI SIDE-BY-SIDE: My TechCentralStation column argues that Wi-Fi and EVDO are complementary, not competitive.
SOMEBODY ASK JAN EGELAND WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT THIS:
TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.
While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft.
The demand will come as a deep embarrassment to Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, whose officials started the negotiation before the disaster struck Thailand – killing tens of thousands of people and damaging its economy.
While aid workers from across Europe are helping to rebuild Thai livelihoods, trade officials in Brussels are concluding a jets-for-prawns deal, which they had hoped to announce next month.
As the world’s largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU.
Norway. Home of Jan Egeland. If you ask me, this sounds rather . . . stingy.
UPDATE: A reader says that there are many errors in the Scotsman piece. Click “read more” to read his response.
CIA PREDICTS COLLAPSE:
THE CIA has predicted that the European Union will break-up within 15 years unless it radically reforms its ailing welfare systems.
The report by the intelligence agency, which forecasts how the world will look in 2020, warns that Europe could be dragged into economic decline by its ageing population. It also predicts the end of Nato and post-1945 military alliances.
In a devastating indictment of EU economic prospects, the report warns: “The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU, undermining its ambitions to play a heavyweight international role.”
It adds that the EU’s economic growth rate is dragged down by Germany and its restrictive labour laws. Reforms there – and in France and Italy to lesser extents – remain key to whether the EU as a whole can break out of its “slow-growth pattern”. . . .
The report says: “Either European countries adapt their workforces, reform their social welfare, education and tax systems, and accommodate growing immigrant populations [chiefly from Muslim countries] or they face a period of protracted economic stasis.”
As a result of the increased immigration needed, the report predicts that Europe’s Muslim population is set to increase from around 13% today to between 22% and 37% of the population by 2025, potentially triggering tensions.
Via Aaron at Freewillblog, who observes that CIA reports predicting problems in Iraq get a lot of attention, but that this one seems to be getting rather little.
January 19, 2005
GREG DJEREJIAN reviews the Condi hearings.
HERE’S A UKRAINE UPDATE from Le Sabot Post-Moderne.
MESSAGE FROM MY SECRETARY, currently serving in Iraq: “I hear Damascus is nice in the Spring!” More details later.
KAUS HAS LOTS OF NEW STUFF at Gearbox.
Message to the new Slate management: Carblogging will sell more ads than politics. Give Kaus a Bugatti, or a Chrysler 300, or a 1968 hemi-Barracuda, and have him drive across America, blogging as he goes. [Cross-promotion with those Verizon Wireless people? — Ed. Brilliant!]
And Mickey should pick me up along the way. We’ve done it before!
HOW TO BLOG LIKE A ROCK STAR: Advice from Ambra Nykol.
Back in January ’03, you may remember a group of Western liberals who volunteered to go to Iraq as human shields in case the US enforced UN resolutions that Saddam violated. Key graf:
“…they are willing to put themselves in the firing line should US and British forces bomb Iraq. They plan to identify potential bombing targets such as power stations and bridges and act as human shields to protect them.”
Well, I think I have just the job for these globe-travelers: Iraq Election Poll Worker. They are familiar with the terrain and people, they have a self-professed desire to help and they seem very articulate. However, their biggest asset is bravery. If they are willing to hunker down between Coalition Forces and a bridge, standing between a foreign terrorist and a polling precinct should be no big deal. Any takers?
Heh. (Via GayPatriot).
DIRTY BOMBS IN BOSTON? Winds of Change has a roundup and tips.
ABC NEWS: Desperately searching for a military funeral on inauguration day.
Hey, if they want to show a casualty of the Bush Administration, they could always put on Dan Rather’s reputation. Shortly to be followed by their own, at this rate . . . . (Via Capt. Ed, who has further comments).
UPDATE: Major John Tammes emails from Bagram:
Perhaps all of us serving in the armed forces should send a statement to ABC saying something along the lines of “in case I should be killed in action, you are hereby requested to come nowhere near my funeral, and also requested to not make political hay out of it either.” I guess I am not at risk, since getting killed in Afghanistan is not quite the “balance” they are looking for.
Indeed.
THIS IS TROUBLING:
As the nation’s capital prepares itself for the presidential inauguration by going into lockdown mode and placing portable Stinger missile launchers throughout the city, Americans may be stunned to learn that the District of Columbia has been forced by a federal judge to hand over intelligence data on police tactics, training, and strategies from the last inauguration to an organization with documented ties to terrorist groups and Saddam Hussein.
Perhaps this report is in error, as I don’t believe that this sort of thing should be discoverable.
RATHERGATE: The first time as farce, the second time as really absurd farce:
Mr. Moonves again defended retaining the president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, saying that he was satisfied that Mr. Heyward had asked the right questions before the broadcast, though he was “denied the right answers” by the executives under him.
The report’s producer, Mary Mapes, was fired as a result of the panel’s report. Three others were asked to resign. Mr. Moonves revealed today that none of the three have done so. Asked what CBS will do if they refuse to resign, Mr. Moonves said he could not talk about that situation. “It’s a legal issue,” he said.
Tom Maguire observes: “It must be like herding cats over there.”
HOW THE DEMOCRATS CAN WIN: Who knew it was so easy?
IRAQI BLOGGER ALI responds to Sarah Boxer and to Juan Cole.
BOIFROMTROY: “Barbara, Condi, Dianne and Bill Walk into a Bar…”
This is funny, too.
UPDATE: More comments from Austin Bay.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here.
And here, too.
IN THE MAIL: A copy of F.I.R.E.’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus (timed, I guess, to coincide with the blogad). And a copy of Mark Levin’s Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America. I haven’t read Levin’s book, whose title seems a bit hyperbolic, but I’m guessing that the market for conservative books attacking liberal courts will head downward soon, as Bush appoints a lot more judges.
STEFAN SHARKANSKY says there’s an explosion of people power in politics and the media. But he wants more.
SAM HELDMAN has reentered the blogosphere.
I myself would not argue that Darwinism in biology classes is protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Rather, I would argue more narrowly that everything else is forbidden. If a school district decides not to teach biology at all, that’s fine. But if they do teach it, they aren’t allowed to include religious proselytizing in the curriculum.
The distinction here is this: creationism is Christian proselytizing, a no-no for government bureaucrats. Intelligent Design is so clearly a thinly veiled version of creationism that it’s forbidden too. Darwinism, however, is simply science. School districts are free to stop teaching science if they want, but if they do teach it, they have to teach Darwinism just as much as they have to teach Newtonian mechanics, Boyle’s law, and the theory of relativity.
Yes. I suppose there are atheistic Intelligent Design fans out there somewhere, but I don’t think I’ve met one. And I doubt that they really fit into the ID community.
UPDATE: Michael Barone emails:
You say you know of no atheist Intelligent Design believers. Well, I’m an agnostic, and I think (though I haven’t given much thought to it) that there might
be something to Intelligent Design. You could say I’m agnostic about it. Of course that’s not the same thing as an atheist believing in Intelligent
Design . . . .Just thought I’d share that. There’s snow on the ground here in DC; I’m going to page back and look at some of your Knoxville photoblogging.
There’s no snow here, but it was 14 degrees when I took my daughter to school yesterday, and it’s not a whole lot more pleasant today. It is, indeed, a change from last week. Then there’s this scene, from last summer. . . . Sigh.
GREG DJEREJIAN takes a critical look at Bush’s war leadership. Excerpt:
Bush must more effectively communicate to the world audience the nature of his global war on terror. Between a widely (though, it should be noted, not quite as widely as sometimes suggested) supported Afghanistan campaign and the so controversial war in Iraq–America’s war on terror lost much support in the court of international opinion. I’m not talking here of the cheap Euro-Gaullist broadsides about Iraq simply consituting a bid for hegemony in the Middle East, or for access to cheap oil (that worked out well, eh?), or simply a dynastic clean up of Poppy’s unfinished business. But the reality is, of course, that there exists much misapprehension and confusion about why, for Bush, the war in Iraq has been conflated with the war on terror. Bush must now, as his second term begins, communicate better what he means when he says Iraq is now the “central front” in the war on terror. This is particularly critical in the conspiracy-ridden Middle East.
Read the whole thing, which as always is thoughtful and measured. It’s also worth revisiting this critique, written by Austin Bay just after his return from Iraq:
If there is one mistake I think we’ve made in fighting this war, it’s been the way we’ve soft-pedaled the ideological dimensions. This really is a fight for the future, between our free, open political system and the unholy alliance of despots and Islamo-fascists whose very existence depends on denying liberty.
Iraq — long plundered by despotism — should be a wealthy country. It has water, an agricultural base, a source of capital (oil) and people willing to work. It is the best place to begin to reform the dysfunctional political systems that shackle and rob the vast the majority of Middle Easterners. The lesson of 9-11, three years on, is that liberty must sustain a focused offensive if it is to survive.
We should be hearing more like this from the Bush Administration.