April 30, 2003
CATCH THE FEVER
Nobody wants to repeat the mistakes that let AIDS ravage a good
segment of the population because alarmist talk served as a healthcare
inducement against free and easy sex and also involved the forced
discussion of gay guys doing it. So the SARS scare is roaring ahead
and proving more contagious than the syndrome itself. I think we could
all use a healthy dose of skepticism.
Why am I skeptical? One reason is the use of the term
"syndrome" in the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome assignation. I
know that they've pinpointed the germinal root of transmission to SARS
as some sort of specific virus, but syndrome usually connotes a very
relaxed version of disease classification. Here's how syndromes (and
health scares) usually progress. People get sick, sometimes they die.
Doctors aren't sure as to the exact cause of death. A mental instinct
for lumping unexplained events into a pattern-forming trend occurs.
Someone suggests that we're suffering a syndrome. Previously
unexplained deaths are attributed to said syndrome. The media picks up
the story. People start freaking out. Things that previously would
have been regarded as benign colds are now regarded as "the syndrome".
Psychosomatic illness ensues.
I have no doubt that there is a virus that affects the
respiratory system that kills some people. The flu kills people,
especially those with compromised immune systems. I think the current
death rate for SARS is about 4% for those infected.
href="http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,58552,00.html">According
to the World Health Organization (WHO), SARS has infected almost
3,500 people and killed and killed 170. How many people currently
inhabit the earth, 4 billion? I bet more than 170 people choke to
death on cherry pits every month than 170. And this is a health scare
that was reported by The New York Post the other day to have
costed Asian economies nearly $30 billion.
The Asian aspect is important as far as health scares go. A good
panic is always helped when 1) it seems to be borne from foreigners and
2) the foreign nature of the disease makes its apparent lack of affect
more understandable. At this time, not a single case of SARS has been
reported in the U.S. Still, people are freaking out about it. That's
because it's all happening over there. You know, amongst the
teeming hordes. The truth is, not that many people have caught SARS,
fewer people have died from it, and that's in spite of a communist
healthcare system that's probably not that great to begin with. Given
that we're in an environment where any sudden death linked at all to a
respiratory infection will now be classified as a SARS fatality, am I
wrong in being completely underwhelmed at the lack of bodies piling up?
This might be the worst call of all time, but I'm going to go out on a
limb and say that if SARS isn't complete bullshit, it is a phenomenon
that's being blown completely out of proportion. A new plague may sell
a few papers today, but next year SARS, if discussed at all, will be
discounted as a media-driven hoax that affected fewer people than rabid
dogs worldwide.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:28 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 25, 2003
NOW IT'S TIME FOR VIETNAM STRATEGIES
Depending on who you were talking to, a lot of people were hoping
or fearing that Iraq was going to turn into another Vietnam, where
thousands of U.S. troops would lay down their lives in the quagmire of
an unwinnable war. That obviously hasn't been the case thus far.
Militarily, we toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in an astounding fit of
href="http://bunsen.tv/2003_03_01_bunsen_archive.html#200041383">TOTAL
FUCKING VICTORY. But now it's time for us to win the peace and
establish a peaceful, free, and democratic government in Iraq and that
could prove a little trickier.
Yesterday I was reading more of Max Boot's book, The Savage
Wars of Peace, a history of small wars and how they shaped American
power in U.S. history. While Vietnam was not essentially a small war,
Boot includes it in his book because the conflict shared many of the
same characteristics of smaller conflicts in the past. Vietnam is
normally viewed as a military failure and, ultimately, it was for the
South Vietnamese who had to surrender to communist oppressors from the
north. But lessons were learned there, and ultimately ignored, that
could prove worthwhile in the current conflict in Iraq.
Diverging from a strategy that focused on big-unit conflicts, the
U.S. experimented with tactics that concentrated on co-operative
defense and pacification of Vietnamese communities that were quite
successful. Here's an excerpt from the book discussing the Combined
Action Program begun in 1965:
This was a marine initiative modeled on the constabularies the Corps
had founded in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. There
was a direct line of descent, for after chasing Sandinistas around the
wilds of Nicaragua in the 1930s Chesty Puller had become an instructor
at the marines' Basic School, where one of his pupils was 2nd
Lieutenant Lewis Walt, who as a general in Vietnam would go on to
create CAP. "The Caribbean campaigns had many lessons applicable to
Vietnam forty five years later," Walt wrote. Trying to apply those
lessons, the marines organized CAP in 1965. Each Combined Action
Platoon consisted of a marine rifle squad under the command of a
sergeant--all volunteers chosen for their ability to work with the
locals. The 12-15 marines were paired with a platoon from South
Vietnam's Popular Forces militia, about 30 men from the local
community. Together, the marines and militiamen worked on securing a
village from the Vietcong, the Americans providing military know-how,
the Vietnamese invaluable knowledge of local conditions.
The CAP program turned out to be very successful, with American
troops often volunteering to extend their tours of duty rather than to
rotate home like many other short-timers in the field. Indeed, Boot
writes that a strong bond would grow between U.S. troops and the
militiamen they worked with and the communities they were defending.
It was classic hearts and minds, with Americans attending events like
birthdays and weddings of locals and occasionally refusing orders to
withdraw when under attack from the Vietcong and North Vietnamese
regular army.
The situation in Iraq seems similar. Judging by the reception
coalition troops received, most Iraqis are happy to be free under under
the thumb of the Ba'ath fascists. Unfortunately, it now seems that
there will be a lot of forces jockeying to take their place, whether
it's Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists or some other warlord Saddam
pretender. The job for General Garner should be to try to replicate
the CAP program by teaming small units of coalition soldiers with
larger units of an organized Iraqi militia committed to forming a
democratic civil government. Ordinary Iraqis need to feel safe to form
a new government free from retaliation by political opponents, much the
way the Vietnamese needed to be protected from marauding Vietcong. A
joint-operational approach should also mitigate feelings among the
Iraqis that their country is being occupied by coalition forces. If
there's going to be an us-against-them sentiment, we want it to be an
us, forces for peaceful reformation of an Iraqi government, against
them, violent thugs looking to intimidate the populace. This would be
preferable to an us, coalition forces, against them, the Iraqi
people.
The CAP program was abandoned in Vietnam because it didn't fit
into the big-war framework held by Westmoreland and MacNamara, shaped
through WWII and the Korean War. The problem wasn't that they were
using history as their guide, but that they weren't looking back far
enough. The strategies currently needed in Iraq are the ones
successfully employed in small conflicts fought a hundred years ago,
pacification and defense against guerilla elements while retaining the
goodwill of the general population. If you're interested in reading
more, look for The Savage Wars of Peace and read pp 304-309.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:50 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2003
TIGER BEAT
Talk about your two-fers. The guy who runs Tiger Rescue in
California--now, do they rescue people from tigers or the other way
around?--has been charged with both child endangerment and animal
cruelty after 90 dead tigers were found at his facility. Here's the
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/24/national/main550883.sht
ml">story.
Separately, Bunsen has an interview with Uday Hussein's pet tiger,
Mandor. He's a man-eater alright. And well, I'm not going to come
right out and suggest that, uh, not that there's anything wrong with
it, but I'm guessing Mandor wouldn't mind mauling Sen. Santorum these
days. If you get my
href="http://www.bunsen.tv/2003_04_01_bunsen_archive.html#200175107">dr
ift.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DONNIE DARKO
This past weekend a friend of mine remarked that a person's
reaction to the movie Donnie Darko had become a personal litmus
test as to whether that person's movie judgement could be trusted, and
maybe more. I instantly knew what my friend was talking about. I saw
Donnie Darko about two months ago at the suggestion of someone
whose previous recommendations were solid.
Donnie Darko is a teen movie. It is because it's about
high schoolers and their families. It's about alienation from one's
peers and from life itself. It's about questioning the meaning of it
all and the existence of God. It's melodramatic but perfectly suited
in mood. It's got an eighties soundtrack that seems to be purposefully
overmixed into the audio at times, becoming part of the narrative
instead of just atmospherics. And it's got Drew Barrymore.
I say Donnie Darko is a teen movie, but everyone should
watch it. I'd like to say more about the movie, but I think the less
one is expecting going into a viewing, the more one will be shocked by
the originality of everything within. That's why I discourage trying to
read up on it beforehand online. My only suggestion is that you should
watch Donnie Darko at night with the lights out, on a good t.v.
and with the sound turned up a bit more than normal. And watch
everything. Lulls aren't and everything is important.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:37 AM | | Comments (4) | TrackBack
FASCISTS CLOSER TO HOME
Whatever label you put on a country's governmental system, when
it operates as a police state employing friends and neighbors to act as
informants against those that speak out against the current regime,
it's fascism. Due to recent economic turmoil, that's what's going on
in Chile. This is from today's Washington Post:
To his secret bosses in the Chilean military, he was known as "Agent
Miguel," one of at least a dozen government spies who had infiltrated
the ranks of the journalists, human rights activists, economists,
librarians and others espousing democratic reforms in Chile.
Finally, leftists have a legitimate beef about concrete
COINTELPRO-like programs operated in order to jail dissidents and
government critics. It's a disgrace. And U.S. human rights activists
need to wade into this shit up to their waists immediately.
Oops, I misread. This isn't happening in Chile. It's happening
in Cuba. I won't hold my breath for protests from the perpetually
outraged. Here's the article.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:32 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2003
DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN, ONLY
Just when you start to feel like all the talk of Republicans as
being anti-sex prudes is just so much political demonizing, one of them
will come out and prove it. Sen. Rick Santorum is currently enduring a
shitstorm of bad press of his own making, by saying "If the Supreme
Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your
home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to
polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery,
you have the right to anything."
href="http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_04
_20_dish_archive.html#200185854">Andrew Sullivan was correct in
pointing out that's not exactly what he said.
He noted that a reporter for
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/national/23TALK.html">The
New York Times points out that the parenthetical gay added to
the statement by the Associated Press was inferred by a following
sentence by Santorum saying "All of those things are antithetical to a
healthy, stable, traditional family." Here's a fuller excerpt:
You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the
basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's
antithetical to strong, healthy families. Whether it's polygamy,
whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are
antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.
That statement immediately followed one where he said that our
problematic obsession with a (nonexistent) right to privacy began with
a landmark Griswold case that legalized certain forms of contraception.
And here's where we get down to it:
Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of
marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is
based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society.
And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships.
So it's not just homosexual behavior that Santorum finds worthy
of legal restrictions. It's any sexual behavior that doesn't serve to
support marriage and resulting in children. So if you happen to be a
single person that wants to use birth control when you're having sex
with someone you don't intend to marry, you are screwed. Forget the
birth control and limit yourself to some good ol' fashioned sodomy?
Even more screwed. I'm guessing any person that ever appeared in an
episode of HBOs
href="http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?CHANNEL=All+Chan
nels&ACTION_SEARCH=SEARCH&KEY=TITLE&VALUE=real+sex">Real Sex
series would be jailed for crimes against the family.
It's ironic that a Republican party that is constantly calling
for the government to "get off the backs of business" is now calling
for us to "get off the backs" of whomever we might happen to be
sexually involved with. The GOP needs to knock this guy down a peg or
twelve in the leadership hierarchy because he confirms every suspicion
ever held about the anti-sex positions held by some in the party. If
Mr. Santorum feels like his morals call for a very restrictive take on
human sexuality, that's fine. Power to him. It's definitely not his
role as a legislator to try to fob it off on the rest of us though.
Read his whole interview
here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2003
SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FETUS
Last year, the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) came
dangerously close to parodying itself into extinction when it set up a
legal defense fund for the benefit of Andrea Yates, the mother that
methodically drowned all five of her children in a bathtub. They're
about to make the same mistake in the case of murdered woman Laci
Peterson.
A longtime advocate of women's right to choose, N.O.W. began to
look as if they were becoming advocates of infanticide in the Yates
case, which is something the pro-life camp has been accusing them of
being for years. Yesterday, N.O.W. went on record saying they were
against a second count of murder in the deaths of Laci Peterson and her
8.5-month-term child, already named Connor. Her husband has been
accused in both of their deaths.
N.O.W. is afraid that a second murder count will serve as a bad
precedent against the termination of late-term fetuses, but the
organization is actually endangering the current, and somewhat
widespread, support for legal abortion rights. N.O.W. is sacrificing
political viability for ideological absolutism. The organization has
recently been in battles over partial-birth abortions. This is a
practice where a late-term fetus is induced into delivery, partially
extracted from the mother, and then killed. At its face, it's a
barbaric practice, but one that pro-choice advocates feel must be
defended lest they descend a slippery slope where any abrogation of a
woman's right to end the existence of a pre-term fetus becomes
acceptable.
This is where ideology trumps politics. Where support for
sensible abortion rights (say, in the first term) is relatively
widespread, the concept of late-term elective abortion is relatively
unpopular. I can think of few constituencies who advocate amnesty for
men who unilaterally abort the unborn children of their wives and
girlfriends. But by N.O.W.'s current standards, a husband or boyfriend
who finds out his wife or girlfriend was pregnant could kick her in the
stomach or throw her down the stairs and get rid of a pregnancy that
she may well have wanted with a simple assault charge. Is that
N.O.W.'s definition of pro-choice?
Obviously political opponents are going to try to take advantage
of every ideological inconsistency in the metaphysical question of when
life begins, but groups like N.O.W. are in danger of conceding the
legal and political war in favor of the most inconsequential and
unpopular battles. If N.O.W. wants to preserve women's rights to
choose, it should focus a little more on remaining pro-choice and focus
a little less on insisting on the absolute meaninglessness of late-term
fetus life. Because I think very few people share their conviction in
the latter. And if N.O.W. really wants to keep abortion safe and
legal, it should start taking stands that prevent husbands and
boyfriends from performing their own back-alley versions via kicking,
punching, and murder. Because that's not respecting a woman's right to
choose at all. Laci Peterson certainly didn't get to.
UPDATE: The comments made regarding the unsuitability of a
second count of murder for the death of Laci Peterson and her child
were made by the head of a local chapter of N.O.W. in Morris
County, NJ, who has since said she was just "thinking aloud." Not
thinking is more like it. The national headquarters has stepped away
from her comments and now says that the organization "felt it wasn't
the right thing to take a position right now."
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:14 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2003
THE DISAPPEARED
"I lost my brother but that is a small price to get rid of
Saddam."
On Nov. 5, 1981, Mazen's entire class was taken, turned in by the
school principal. On Nov. 14, Awatif and her husband were picked up.
Four days later, Arkan Kahachi and his cousin Amjid Asadi were arrested
on the street. On Nov. 21 Alia Hamdani, Abdul's brother, was dragged
from a Baghdad hospital where she was a pharmacist. Several months
later, on Feb. 5, 1982, Ali Ibrahim Asadi, Basil's father, was arrested
as he drove his son in his car. The police dropped Basil, then 9, at
his front door.
After the arrest of Arkan and Amjid on Nov. 18, six of the women in the
family were arrested and held for nine months.
At 3 p.m. Saturday, with lunch still warm on the table, Dhafer burst
into the family home in northwest Baghdad.
"They are all dead," he said, referring to the eight still missing.
"All but Mazen. All but Mazen. All dead."
A wail of grief rose from both the men and women in the house where
only moments earlier they had been speaking of their belief that some
secret prison would soon be liberated to reveal their loved ones.
Human rights groups estimate that 300,000 people were seized from
their homes, schools, or workplaces by Iraqi security services before
being tortured and executed, although it is feared that this could be
a conservative figure. Many were simply never heard from again.
Follow the link to a tragic story in today's Washington
Post.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:30 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
STACKING THE DECK
As part of the effort to capture officials of the former
Ba'athist regime in Iraq, coalition forces have been distributing decks
of playing cards with pictures of targeted party members on them. It's
like a deck of naked lady playing cards but they all have bushy
moustaches.
News reports mentioning the successful apprehension of any of these
individuals tend to be a little misleading when they say that coalition
forces have captured another "face card." When discussing a full deck
of cards, it's generally accepted that the face cards--jacks, queens,
and kings--are relatively important, junior only to the four aces.
Granted, all of the coalition cards have faces on them, but to say that
another face card has been captured when it's only the three of clubs
or two of diamonds seems to be exaggerating the importance of whomever
we've detained. I suppose this is why we're using a deck of cards as a
form of propaganda instead of a chessboard. It's a little difficult to
inflate the importance of a captured pawn.
Posted by Lexiphane at 8:56 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2003
IT'S NOT A TOOMAH!
I was out last night grabbing a beer when the guy next to me
struck up a conversation. In the course of small talk he revealed that
he had moved to NYC to get close to his son, who was in his early 20's
and who he hadn't seen in years. Obviously we had moved past small
talk when he revealed to me, with tears in his eyes, that he only had
months to live. I pried.
I asked what was wrong with him and apparently he had brain
cancer, a tumor the size of a grapefruit occupied his skull. "Jesus" I
said, pausing to let that info sink in. "You are one sick
fuck." Never has being a skeptic been easier. That guy buckled like
my belt. "Alright" he said, "I don't have cancer. I'm not even sick.
But I do have a son." Yeah, poor kid. He promised to explain when he
got back from the bathroom, but I wasn't entirely interested so I went
home. My only regret is not telling him this:
"Cancer is serious and tumors suck. They're not fodder for trite bar-
room small talk. They rob us of the people closet to us just when
we're not ready, which is always. If you need to make up stories about
your imminent death to total strangers in a bar it's not imminent
enough. Go ahead and throw yourself in front of a bus. I'll help you.
Barring that, and conceding that some poor woman was unfortunate to
conceive a child with such a pathetically bad emotional manipulator as
yourself, stay away from your son. Living in NYC brings enough bad
neighbors without you."
And then I would have smashed a bottle over his head. But like I
said, I walked out when he went to the bathroom. Unfortunately, this
is a true story.
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:56 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2003
''SCARLET-HOSED STOOGES''
This is one of the funniest
href="http://espn.go.com/page2/s/caple/030415.html">things I've
read in a long time.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:11 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NOT AS BAD AS FEARED
Now that the significant military conflict part of Operation
Iraqi Freedom has ended without a descent into quagmire, high numbers
of civilian or coalition casualties--thanks to that high-tech military
hardware liberals love to deride--environmental disaster via destroyed
oil wells and pipelines, and Stalingrad-like urban warfare, anti-war
critics were quick to pick up on any sign of failure in the coalition's
mission to liberate Iraq.
Aside from the perpetual moron Ted Rall, who's latest column is
bizarrely titled "How We
Lost the Iraq War", which I'm guessing is just a followup for
consistency to his piece
href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0150/rall.php">"How we Lost
Afghanistan" written just three months after 9/11/01, most critics
have seized on the looting of the Iraq National Museum as proof that
coalition forces have blown the war.
An article in today's Wall Street Journal, however,
points out that the looting of the museum was not as bad as everyone is
making it out to be. Here's Donny George, the director-general of
restoration at the Iraqi Antiquities department describing how the
museum's staff wisely stashed most of the ancient valuables away
because they knew a war was coming:
"Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it
was our duty to protect everything. We thought there would be some sort
of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be
looted."
It's also noted that a good part of the collection had previously
been siphoned off by Saddam Hussein's family and sold abroad. While I
feel it's possible the military could have done more to prevent what
looting did happen from occurring, isn't it a bit much to ask coalition
forces liberating a nation to stop in mid-war to prevent Iraqi citizens
from looting their own cultural heritage? And if a firefight
did break out, how would the press have played the story of U.S. troops
firing on the Iraq National Museum and killing "civilians"? It
probably would have been remarked on as a crime against the Iraqi
people and a low-point in the war so far.
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MEAT ME IN MANHATTAN II
Now that Dr. Robert Atkins has
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=1&cid=578&
u=/nm/20030417/ts_nm/people_atkins_dc">died of his injuries
suffered last week, my attempt at humor [see MEAT ME IN
MANHATTAN, 4/10/03
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=72&mode=&order=0&thold=0">here] might be seen as in bad taste.
Try to think of it as more of a short homage to the guy's life's
work.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2003
PRODUCT LIABILITY & GUN SAFETY
Don MacLeod makes an unpersuasive
href="http://www.nypress.com/static/billboard.cfm#1833">case in
this week's New York Press that Congress' efforts to protect
gunmakers from legal bludgeoning are actually a case of an industry
receiving extra-special protection from product liability laws. The
root of his argument is that guns are so-called unregulated and are now
not subject to the same product safety regulations that govern teddy
bears and toasters.
This is actually incorrect. What Congress is doing is preventing
the industry from succumbing to abusive lawsuits filed by people that
actually believe that there is no such thing as a safe gun. Guns are
unique in the product liability arena in that their primary purpose is
to inflict harm on another person. To sue gunmakers for reliably
producing such product is akin to suing automakers for producing cars
that are misused for bank robbery getaway cars or driven under the
influence of drugs or alcohol.
I think the only circumstances I could see where guns would be
subject to product liability laws are if they regularly or occasionally
misperformed--either jamming when they were supposed to fire or firing
spontaneously. Anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, I believe the
evidence will show that cases of guns misfiring are akin to 90-year-old
drivers who claim their cars spontaneously accelerated into the front
of the Piggly Wiggly, i.e. user error is actually at fault.
Proponents of spurious regulation will argue that since accidents
are possible, gunmakers must do more to make guns safe.
Unfortunately, this flies in the face of the protective value of
firearms. Gun safety is actually a very simple matter. Guns should
always be assumed to be loaded. They should never be pointed at
something one shouldn't intend to shoot. And one's finger should never
touch the trigger until one is ready to fire. So-called advanced
safety measures will most likely cause users to ignore or forget one or
all of these basic safety rules. Also, additional "safety" measures
will only serve to make guns more complicated and likely to misperform.
In this regard, guns are like parachutes. It is absolutely essential
that it operates effectively every single time. Even occasional
malfunction becomes a tragedy waiting to happen. That is why most
legislation for "smart guns" that rely on micro-electronics exempt
police department weapons from having to comply. Cop unions are smart
enough to know that they're not going to arm their members with guns
that will probably work.
These arguments are actually beside the point. The would-be
bringers of these product liability lawsuits are not interested in gun
safety. They're using the courts to bankrupt gunmakers, who are rarely
deep-pocketed. Anti-gun advocates have failed repeatedly in the
legislatures, the polls, and the ballot box to enact their agendas.
That's why they're resorting to a cynical strategy of legal harrassment
to restrict our constitutional rights. Facile arguments are hardly
winning their case.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:23 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 15, 2003
THE ONLY BUSINESS SCHOOLS THAT MATTER: 2004
Today marks the day when admitted prospective b-schoolers have to
make a decision about which program they would like to attend. Since
the lexiphane himself is rather uninformed on such matters, I've taken
the liberty of soliciting an outside expert to weigh in on the topic.
The author recently graduated from a top MBA program and has
significant experience in helping others gain entry to a number of
elite schools. The opinions below are his and should not be taken as
those of the lexiphane. I do implicitly trust his judgement, however,
and am fairly certain he was not drunk during the ranking process.
Today is the day most B-school hopefuls must decide there fate for the
next two years. I feel it's fitting on this day to release the site's
first annual Business School Ranking. This ranking is appropriately
titled "The Only Business School's That Matter: 2004" This ranking is
the result of five years of data collected, analyzed, and overanalyzed.
There is no need to go
into detail of how the ranking was formulated other than to say
everything was considered. Without further ado, Lexiphane.com presents,
The Only Business School's That Matter: 2004.
1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Dartmouth College (Tuck)
4. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
5. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
6. MIT (Sloan)
7. Columbia University
8. University of Chicago
9. University of Michigan
10. University of Virginia (Darden)
11. Duke University (Fuqua)
12. University of California at Berkeley (Haas)
13. Cornell University
14. University of California at Los Angeles (Anderson)
15. Yale University
16. New York University (Stern)
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:57 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SOMEONE DESERVES A BEATING
Reckless drunk driving, speeding up to 100 m.p.h., plowing into a
house. Talk about your
href="http://www.wmcstations.com/Global/story.asp?S=1233102">blasts
from the past. Can't we just all get along? And wasn't Cedric the
Entertainer publicly exorciated by Jesse Jackson just a few months ago
for saying he got what was coming to him?
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:29 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
URBAN WARFARE LEGEND
That British soldier that was pictured a few months ago wearing
his Kevlar helmet that had been struck with two bullets is now
admitting it was just a prank. I'm all in favor of pulling the legs of
journalists, but a joke like that seems like tempting fate. I'm
guessing he never saw Sam Fuller's Korean War movie
href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0044072">The Steel Helmet.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:10 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBack
PERSPECTIVE
The Atlantic Monthly mentions Martin Middlebrook's newly
reprinted history
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0850529433/qid=1050416858/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-4732774-
4529466?v=glance&s=books">The First Day of the Somme this
month. On the morning of July 1, 1916 British forces climbed out of
their trenches and started advancing towards the German lines 200
yards in front of them. By that evening, the Brits had suffered
60,000 casualties and 20,000 dead. And that was from a tiny island
nation with a population certainly smaller than it has now.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:45 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SYRIA NEXT?
Are we going after the Ba'athists in Syria next? Let's see, they
support terrorists, occupy a neighboring country, i.e. Lebanon, and
it's a fascist dictatorship. Also, it seems that the high and mighty
from Iraq are now sunning themselves at a Syrian resort town on the
Mediterranean. I think we're currently just saber rattling to get
Assad to shape up. If we were planning a go-ahead into Damascus would
we be sending carrier groups out of the region? We could just be
rotating those forces home for a rest, but it appears further action is
unlikely.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:13 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS
I bet John Wilkes Booth wishes he'd been Dutch. Shoot a
politician in the head in the Netherlands and you only get
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2948555.stm">18
years. I guess political assassination in that country isn't
considered such a big deal. Where the hell is Jack Ruby when you
really need him?
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:03 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LET THEM EAT DIRT
Magicians Penn & Teller have an excellent show on the cable
channel Showtime called
href="http://www.sho.com/ptbs/">Bullshit! Every week they
debunk some crank practice in a highly entertaining way. Usually the
show is good for a laugh as they mercilessly mock gullible people who
spend a surprising amount of money to have psychics communicate with
their pets or misremember visits by aliens that never occurred.
Occasionally, though, the show veers into the realm of absolutely
infuriating outrage.
I watched the episode from two weeks ago last night and it was
about diet. Half the episode was devoted to the controversy about
genetically modified foods. It featured
href="http://www.normanborlaug.org/">Norman Borlaug, who won the
Nobel prize for his life's work in agricultural genetics. It's been
estimated that Borlaug's work in increasing crop yields in third world
countries has saved, or allowed, the lives of a billion people. He
could be considered the greatest humanitarian to have ever walked the
earth, and he is by me. Then you had a number of anti-GM (genetically
modified) foods people, from Greenpeace employees to raw-foods
advocates.
I honestly am not sure who was worse. The Greenpeace people make
a living by ensuring people starve to death. The group of raw-foods
hipsters was a collection of slow-witted dullards (and no, there's no
amount of redundancy enough for this crew) living in a condo off Venice
Beach unsuccessfully trying to get passersby to try some of their
rabbit food. The head "chef" was espousing the use of lettuce leaves
as a wrapping for a burrito instead of the insidious corn tortilla.
The fact that people have been making tortillas by hand and cooking
them over open fires for quite possibly thousands of years seems to
have escaped this loser. Could he have picked on a more innocuous
foodstuff?
But back to the outrage. There are few things more infuriating
to me than well-fed first worlders lecturing about the hypothetical (at
best) dangers of GM food, while a good portion of the world goes
hungry. As if humans have not literally been manipulating crop
genetics for the benefit of increased yields since the advent of
organized agriculture. Just because we now do it in a less ham-handed
way--gene manipulation instead of grafting and cross-breeding--the
practice is now considered to produce "Frankenfoods." What it does
produce is more productive land, less damage to the environment through
a decreased reliance on pesticides, better health outcomes in third
world populations thanks to vitamin fortified crops, and quite simply a
decrease in people fucking starving to death. In the land of
the corpulent and ever-dieting such a concern seems impossibly distant
and inconceivable, but it is still a very real problem for a lot of
people on this planet. That some people want to thwart the work of
people like Dr. Borlaug in favor of scare-mongering advocacy really
pisses me off. What do you think about GM foods? Go ahead and put
something in the Comments section.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:51 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2003
SMOKING KILLS
Well that's a shock. It only took about two weeks before the
entirely foreseeable occurred in an East Village nightclub when a
bouncer tried to get two drunk guys to stop smoking, which led to a
fight, which led to the bouncer being stabbed to
href="http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/73386.htm">death.
Hmmmm, you mean drunk people might be resistant to pleas to not indulge
in what we've been told is an addiction worse than heroin? Didn't see
that coming. Well at least bouncer Dana Blake will not succumb to the
questionable
risks of second-hand smoke. Way to look out for the health and welfare
of bar workers Mayor Bloomberg. For the record, I hope these two
idiots spend the rest of their lives behind bars, where cigarettes are
ironically currency.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:27 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PARLEZ VOUS FRANGLAIS?
News men and women in Baghdad and at home have been making
unintentional fools of themselves for the past couple of weeks by
trying to be a little too savvy. As troops make their way through
Iraq, reporters have been noting discovered stockpiles of weapons as
found "cachets." What they're actually talking about are caches.
Cache is a borrowed French word that means a secret store. It is
pronounced KASH in English and KOSH in French. The French version
rhymes with vache, which is the French word for cow. Surrendering to
the very irritating tendency to inflect words with their foreign
origins, however, (e.g. nee-ka-RAW-gwa for Nicaragua) journalists have
been pronouncing cache kash-AY. That would be cachet, which is
something that confers approval or prestige. The next time you're
watching the news, see how long it takes for reporters to start talking
about troops finding cachets of weapons and laugh at them for being a
little too smart for their own good.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 11, 2003
THE MORAL HIGHGROUND, OFFICIALLY SURRENDERED
Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector who claimed the war
was as good as over--and the coalition forces had lost--about two weeks
ago was outed by
href="http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_04
_06_dish_archive.html#200133551">Andrew Sullivan today, and it
wasn't just that Ritter likes to screw
href="http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/Ritter.asp">14-year-old
girls. Sullivan dug up something from a Q&A Ritter did with
Time magazine in September, 2002.
It turns out that Ritter already knew about that children's prison [see
APPEASEMENT IS UNHEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS,
4/9/08
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7
0">here] and decided it was better to let those kids rot. For
peace. And just so there's no question, Ritter was under no illusion
as to how much these pre-adolescents were suffering:
"The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It
appeared to be a prison for children - toddlers up to pre-adolescents -
whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out
politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific
scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what
I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to
promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace."
He was "waging peace". Ladies and gentlemen: Scott Ritter, one
sick, if not absolutely evil, fucking heartless bastard.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:06 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING BY
With the unemployment rate--specially in NYC--at a relatively
high level, what better idea to pitch then to make people compete to be
Donald Trump's toady? NBC is now accepting applications for its new
reality show The Apprentice.
The premise appears to be a number of contestants competing to win a
six-figure job working for the Trump organization. Whether the actual
Donald will serve as the show's Joe Rogan (Fear Factor) remains
to be seen. I just can't imagine that a contest built around being a
flunky will be as exciting as watching someone retrieve tennis balls
from a vat of cows' blood or walking on broken glass with spiders on
your head. Is it time for the reality t.v. show thing to be over yet?
Please? I'm starting to regard episodes of Friends as high art.
If you're interested in being a Trump apprentice, here's where to
href="http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Apprentice/">apply. And there's a
poll to the right.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2003
WRONG MYTH
Charles Krauthammer tries to class up an otherwise sensible
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1515-
2003Apr9.html">column in today's Washington Post by invoking
the Greek mythical character Cassandra. Here he is discussing a
concern that the Ba'ath party might have controlled a group of wild-
eyed fanatical loyalists, ready to fight to the very end:
The sight of them panicked Cassandras here in the United States who
were quick to predict that the evidence of any armed resistance meant
that we were in for a long guerrilla war.
Krauthammer calls those that foresaw the very worst to come when
the situation wasn't that bad Cassandras. This is almost the exact
opposite of what the term means. The character Cassandra was granted
the gift of perfect foresight into the future, but then cursed with the
fact that no one would ever believe her. Those that predicted quagmire
at the first sign of resistance showed little accurate foresight, yet
quite a few people jumped on the quagmire bandwagon. I think the
mythical term that Krauthammer wanted to use wasn't as classy. Chicken
Littles.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:27 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE FINE ASS QUOTIENT
No, that is not what FAQ stands for. It stands for
Frequently Asked Questions. I've decided to anticipate some and have
posted a link to them over to the menu on the left, or you can go
directly to them
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=2&
categories=General+FAQs">here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MEAT ME IN MANHATTAN
Dr. Robert Atkins, inventor of the all-protein Atkins diet,
slipped and fell on an icy sidewalk in New York today, hitting his
head. Critics of the diet contend that it can cause heart disease and
osteoporosis. Dr. Atkins had a heart attack a few months ago. It's
still unclear whether it was the icy sidewalk that caused the fall or
the instantaneous disintegration of the doctor's pelvic bones. Atkins
was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors were going to perform a
procedure to relieve pressure in the patient's skull. Atkins deferred,
however, advising them to "Just put a steak on it. I'll be fine." The
story can be found
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=579&e=2&cid=638&
u=/nm/20030410/en_nm/people_atkins_dc">here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:53 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TORMENTS OF ARABIA
The May issue of The Atlantic Monthly's cover story is by
former CIA operative Robert Baer and based on his new book Sleeping
With the Devil. Its subject is Saudi Arabia, the imminent fall of
the House of Saud that rules it, and the potential devastating
repercussions that could have for the U.S. The main cast of characters
in the Saudi royal family appear to be plucked from the ranks of
Shakespearian tragedies. The ruler, King Fahd, is doddering at age 79
after suffering a stroke a few years ago. His youngest son, Abdul
Aziz, is a 29-year-old child of Fahd's fourth and favorite wife. Aziz
is described as "spoiled and megalomaniacal" and is seen by the rest of
the royal family as an usurper to the throne. Most of the high-living
royal family is reviled by Arabia's devoutly Muslim country, save for
Crown Prince Abdullah who has eschewed the ostentatious lifestyle of an
oil baron in favor of retaining his Bedouin roots. Abdullah is a
moderate who has called for the reigning in of Saudi Arabia's Wahabbi
clergy, is in favor of democratic reforms, and would like to see
military disengagement from the U.S. But he is only one year younger
than the elderly King Fahd, and the rest of the royal family would like
to see Fahd propped up on life support until Abdullah dies first than
allow the reformer to take power.
The picture painted of the larger royal family, which numbers in
the thousands and could reach 60,000 people in the next generation, is
that of a group of sycophants and shakedown artists that are rightly
hated by the underclass of Arabia and its disappearing middle class.
The general population is fanatically Muslim, influenced by the
extremist Wahabbi sect of that religion, which is somewhat backwards
looking and has an extremely negative view of the West. Wahabbi
clerics and militant organizations are being generously bankrolled by
the would-be usurper Abdul Aziz, who knows that he cannot succeed his
father without broad-based support from important elements in Arabian
society.
Enabling all of this is oil money and the political influence it
buys in the U.S. The Saud family relationship with the Bush family is
well known, but Baer points out that Democrats and Republicans alike,
as well as think thanks, most of Congress, U.S. corporations, and
charities have all been dipping from the Saud till for some time. And
oil is the root of the country's weakness. While the U.S. has been
weaning itself from Arabian oil dependence over the past decades, Saudi
Arabia most importantly provides the liquidity to the oil market that
keeps prices from spiraling out of control in times of crisis. But its
resources are incredibly vulnerable to terrorist attacks, especially in
a country with such a radicalized and alienated population.
Baer concludes the article noting that this entire mess is the
making of the U.S., which has been co-opted by its access to friendly
oil and the political influence that has been bought and paid for for
decades. But this cozy relationship will ultimately be its own undoing
as a growing royal family dividing smaller spoils, an increasingly
fanatical general populace, and the vulnerability of the goose that
lays those petroleum eggs will eventually lead to the fall of the House
of Saud. And the repercussions for the U.S. will be severe. The
article is not available online yet, but I highly suggest looking for
the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly at newsstands.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:08 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 9, 2003
APPEASEMENT IS UNHEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS
You know what? When I heard about all those "human shields"
heading to Iraq to position themselves in front of hospitals, and
orphanages, and daycare centers, I didn't hear one word about anyone
wanting to risk his or her life to protect the Prison for
Children.
Those volunteers probably wouldn't have been up to the job anyway.
Best to leave it to the professionals, like the
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1038&e=1&cid=151
4&u=/afp/iraq_war_marines_prison">Marines 5th Regiment. As you can
see in the picture
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030408/241/3qojq.h
tml">here, at least one of them isn't a bloodthirsty babykilling
monster.
UPDATE: And
href="http://www.donaldsensing.com/2003_04_01_archive.html#200120181">h
ere is a great picture captured by blogger Donald Sensing that
communicates what the Iraqis really think about the pacifist shields.
"GO HOME HUMAN SHIELDS, YOU U.S. WANKERS".
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LIKE GRANT TOOK SHERIDAN
Last night I had the distinct pleasure of catching most of I
was a Male War Bride, starring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan. It's
your basic Cary Grant romantic comedy set in Germany following WWII.
Grant plays a Captain in the French army (alright, save your jokes) and
Sheridan is a WAC officer. It struck me--as almost all Grant comedies
do--that sometime in the past fifty years we lost the comedy in
romantic comedies.
I think that's why truly funny movies like There's Something About
Mary can have broad crossover gender appeal, while the majority of
current romantic comedies are ghettoized as chick flicks. I will say
that Cary Grant has a difficult time playing a convincing French
officer when 1) he's got that British accent, undisguised and 2) he's
the antithesis of frenchiness. Unintentionally funny: scroll down the
movie's page at the
Internet Movie Database and you'll see
If you like this title, we also recommend . . .
Time to fine tune that software.
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SADDAM TOPPLED
At lunch today I was watching CNN and they kept replaying a tape
of the center of Baghdad from this morning. It was of that traffic
circle with the mosque in the background that has played the backdrop
for almost every report filed from reporters staying at The Hotel
Palestine. In the center of the traffic circle stood the now familiar
giant statue of Saddam Hussein doing his best Stalin impression, one
arm upraised, seemingly hailing a cab.
The circle was filled with a crowd of hundreds of jubilant Iraqi
men, watching as army engineers affixed a giant chain around the
statue's head and torso. Then a tank pulled and Saddam plunged
forward, pausing for a second perpendicular to the ground before
getting chopped off at the knees and falling to the ground. The crowd
surged forward onto the overturned monument to dance on the dictator's
face, while others took turn battering the pedestal of the statue with
a sledgehammer. Iraqi flags were hung in abundance.
In northern Iraq, the streets filled with cars bedecked with
streamers and filled with beaming Kurds in what I'm sure will become an
annual Iraqi Independence Day parade. Across the world, Iraqi-
Americans in Dearborn, MI staged a similar celebration. Elsewhere in
Iraq there is looting and I'm sure the country will suffer from a
certain level of privation and unscrupulous characters (think
href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0041959">Harry Lime in post-war
Berlin). And there is more to be done, like an assault on Saddam's
hometown of Tikrit. But today Iraq is free of the Ba'ath regime and
Saddam Hussein and that seems something to cheer about.
Posted by Lexiphane at 1:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 8, 2003
OUR LIBERATION OF IRAQ IS ANTI-IMPERIALIST
One of the favorite accusations made by people against our
liberation of Iraq is that it is an exercise in imperialism driven by a
thirst for oil or a desire to impose a free-market dystopia run by
Western multi-national corporations. To these people, the Middle East
has always been at the mercy of the Western powers that made up its
countries out of whole cloth. If they mean that the Western powers
were responsible for establishing the current countries of the Middle
East as modern independent nation states, free from rule by far-flung
empires, they would be correct. But one would have to take a longer
view of the history of the region to understand this.
The origins of the modern Middle East lay in the slow
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. The Ottoman Empire was based in Istanbul, long the seat of
Mid-Eastern empires--the Byzantines before the Ottomans. The Ottomans
had held Istanbul since the 15th century, but by the 19th century its
power over North Africa, Arabia, and Persia had deteriorated
significantly and the empire was more a collection of semi-independent
satrapies then a truly coherent geo-political system. The Western
powers referred to the Ottoman Empire at this time as "the Eastern
Question" because it seemed certain that although it would have been
easy enough to give the Ottomans a killing blow, the ensuing regional
chaos would have been more trouble than it was worth. So the region
came apart piecemeal, driven less by a desire to rule that area from
the West, then to preserve it as a stable gateway to further holdings
elsewhere. That is why the French invaded modern-day Egypt, but then
were later driven out by the British, who needed to secure passage from
the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and on further to their colonial
holdings in India.
The true death knell for the Ottoman Empire came with World War
I, when the Ottomans decided to side with the Germans, most likely
because they were allied against the Russians, who threatened Ottoman
holdings in the northeast (i.e. all the "-istans"). So it became
advantageous for a country like Britain to encourage people like the
Arabs to the south to rebel against the northern-based Ottomans and
fight for "independence." This was the whole subject matter of
Lawrence of Arabia if you've ever read the book or seen the
href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056172">movie. Of course, once the
war was over, it was less independence and more foreign rule that
Middle Eastern people received, with the Western victors receiving the
colonial spoils. The French took countries like Algeria, Lebanon, and
Syria while Britain took the region referred to as Palestine and large
chunks of Arabia and beyond.
It wasn't until after World War II, when the Western powers
pretty much gave up on colonial holdings and decided to redraw the
region as a series of modern independent nation states. It was the
West that granted the region its first time of true anti-imperial rule
in thousands of years. Unfortunately, they kind of botched the job.
Countries like Syria and Iraq were infected with a German-bred form of
fascism called Ba'athism that soon came to power and ruled their people
brutally. Other countries tottered on under archaic monarchies that
weren't fit for the liberating impulses that granted the countries
their independence after WWII. Some countries wouldn't gain their
independence for a few more years, enduring brutal atrocities at the
hands of their colonial masters before winning their freedom. I
am referring to France's
href="http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/05/france-0516.htm">treatment
of Algeria.
It's interesting that the worst current regimes in the Middle
East are former holdings of the countries least interested in
delivering freedom to that region's people, namely France and Germany.
But it's fair to say that all the Western powers share some of the
blame in allowing the formation of countries that installed pliable and
friendly governments instead of ones that actually delivered freedom
and democracy to their citizens. That is a mistake that coalition
forces are attempting to rectify more than a half a century after the
fact. The West made some unselfish moves in granting independence to
the countries of the Middle East after WWII. Now coalition forces are
attempting--at least in Iraq--to deliver a fuller promise of freedom
and non-oppressive government to Iraq's citizens. It is anti-
imperialism in every sense of the word, and a debt that's been too long
in paying.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Damn! I really wanted to wait until we'd declared TOTAL FUCKING
VICTORY before using the old "All Your Base . . ." line, but someone
put together a creative site built around it and Glenn Reynolds
mentioned it at his site here.
Premature perhaps, but well worth
href="http://cloud.prohosting.com/bronze35/ayiabtu.html">watching.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:05 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SHOULD'VE GOTTEN TAKEOUT
Saddam eats it at a restaurant. We could only be so fortunate.
Little did he know that our informants had four tons of explosives
taped behind the toilet tank in the Men's room. Sucker. Article
available here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:58 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
I'm sure many of you were as confused as I was about Iraqi
Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's claims of incipient
victory yesterday and this morning [see NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE
ALONG, 4/7/03
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6
2">here] when it appeared that his country's armed forces were
mounting the defensive equivalent of trying to kill your mailman by
flinging yourself out your fifth-floor window as he passes on the
sidewalk below.
Ace war correspondent Bunsen (coiner of the TOTAL FUCKING VICTORY
campaign) dialed the good Minister up to see what was going on with the
discrepancies. Here's an excerpt:
al-Sahaf: "Hello, is this pig-dog American evil hero Internet
journalist?"
Bunsen: "Did you just call me a hero?"
al-Sahaf: "I did no such thing."
Bunsen: "I was just calling to ask you how the war was going."
al-Sahaf: "Things could not be better. The Iraqi people are moments
from victory. We have captured thousands of American soldiers, donned
their uniforms, and have nearly liberated Baghdad."
Bunsen: "Aren't you fighting to keep Baghdad?"
al-Sahaf: "That is what you are supposed to think. We will occupy the
city with our American solider impostors, roll through with American
tanks, fly the American flag above the rubble of our one-hundred
presidential palaces. We will then occupy the nation for two years,
take a stab at installing a Western-friendly democratic government, and
eventually reinstall an autocratic regime once the West loses interest.
Everything is going according to plan. Did you hear that we captured
Saddam Airport?"
Clever bastards! Apparently, defiling the just-off-probation
Winona Ryder is also part of their plans. You should read the whole
thing here.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:22 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 7, 2003
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG
While Abrams tanks and Bradley vehicles cruised the streets of
Baghdad before parking on the front lawn of Saddam's palaces--
unintentionally turning some of the city's residences into the largest
white trash domiciles ever conceived--a defiant Information Minister
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said the invaders were "committing suicide" at
the capital's gates.
Of course he said this after being chased to the roof of the
Information Ministry and in plain view of coalition forces. Across
town, U.S. troops were checking out Saddam's comfy chairs, using his
shower "Not the guest towels you stinking infidels!", and probably
testing out his porridge for proper temperature levels. I would love
for the great moustached leader to come home and demand "Who's been
sleeping in my bed?" before a .45 is pressed into his hard palate by
some infantryman that hasn't slept so well the last two weeks. In the
meantime, I would love to see some more of those press conferences and
hear how we don't have possession of the palaces or the airport or the
hotels or pretty much anything when I can see pictures of tanks rolling
down the equivalent of Iraq's National Mall and C-130s are re-enacting
the Berlin Airlift at the Baghdad International Airport (new
destination code: GWB). It's good for a laugh.
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:44 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SPECIAL GUEST GRAPHIC
I wasn't the only one to notice that NYT's article last
week about the jubilant crowd in Najaf, Iraq [see MY KIND OF
PEOPLE, 4/3/03
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5
8">here]. Author, columnist, and general polymath James Lileks
took it upon himself to incorporate the crowd's exultations into a logo
that he's letting people steal from his site.
You should check out his Bleat from last Friday that
contained the icon
href="http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0403/040403.html">here
>. I like it so much I think I'll be using it as the graphic for the
War topic for a few days. Here's what Lileks had to say about
the rallying cry:
This is, of course, what a liberated Iraqi shouted to the American
troops as they rumbled past. This was what America meant to him. You
may say it's a crude reduction of a shallow culture.
I say we put it on the twenty dollar bill.
I agree.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:35 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BETTER SAID
Peggy Noonan eulogizes Michael Kelly over at The Wall Street
Journal's site
href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110003298">h
ere. Maureen Dowd does a similarly nice job at The New York
Times
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/06/opinion/06DOWD.html">here.
Andrew Sullivan
href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/04/04/kelly/index.html"
>remembers his former co-worker from The New Republic at
Salon.com. And Jack Shafer does Kelly justice
href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2081167/">here at Slate.com.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:11 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 4, 2003
KELLLY'S A HERO
??? A few years ago, Michael Kelly got booted from the top spot at
The New Republic because he was too critical of Al Gore, then a
protege of then owner Martin Peretz. I always liked Kelly. He was a
good man that went on to helm The Atlantic Monthly, while
continuing a weekly column at The Washington Post. The
Atlantic won several major awards under his stewardship, including
a National Magazine Award, which means something to those that care
about those things.
??? Kelly gave up a plum post because he felt the need to communicate
things as they were. He had to tell the truth. That's what took him
out of his office and into Iraq, the last place you'd expect a guy like
him to be (look at his picture). Unfortunately, Mike Kelly died in a
HUMVEE accident today, which is almost too much to believe. He was a
voice of reason and a voice of truth. The fact that he's dead is
something I almost can't believe until I hear it from him myself.
Condolences to his wife, sons, and family. A news account can be found
here
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:30 PM | |