I will live at home unbulled—
—beautifully dressed and wearing a saffron-coloured gown.
That’s from the oath Lysistrata gets her women friends to swear over a spilled jug of unwatered wine, to withhold sex from the men of Sparta and Athens until the insane war between the two city-states is ended and peace is declared. Which is not what I’d suggest, literally, in this day and age; no. We are most of us more enlightened these days as to one’s sex, one’s gender, and the roles they play in determining one’s destiny and fitness for combat, and anyway, it would open us up to charges of not supporting the troops, and we can’t have that, now, can we?
Instead, the ever–with-it James “The Goods” Capozzola points us to the Lysistrata Project, who are organizing readings of Aristophanes’s rollicking, ribald Lysistrata around the world tomorrow, Monday, 3 March 2003. (As well as a National Moratorium on 5 March.)
Portland area readings include:
- Bridgeport United Church of Christ, 7.00 pm;
- PSU (either Smith Memorial Amphitheater or Lincoln Hall Studio Theater), 1.00 pm;
- the First Congregational Church, 7.30 pm;
- and a reading at Lincoln High School (contact Erin Jones), the details of which are not as yet listed.
Attend a reading, here, or wherever it is you are if it isn’t here; read it yourself to your friends or your affinity group or your spouse or your dog (like our Rittenhouse Reviewer will); find snippets you like and quote them where you can and spread the word. —Live at home unbulled, because (Rabelaisian as it may be) that’s the key and the heart of it all, right there.
That we might all live at home, unbulled.
(Color of gown is, of course, optional.)
Bring it, you ill-tempered, foul-mouthed Father-Coughlin–wannabe who’s so fucking pathetic you have to get your creepy-ass deep-pocket think-tank buddies to bulk-buy your book up the bestseller lists.
A certain bigot (and those on the right who want to claim him as their own, a necessary corrective to the liberal American mediasphere, be my guest; every time he opens his mouth he makes rain for us) with a brand spankin’ new MSNBC TV contract (whose fingerprints are those on the knife in Donahue’s back?) is making some waves by calling for the arrest of the leaders of the anti-war movement once the Shock and Awe start raining down. (A link to his front page is provided as reference, should you need to verify this fact yourself. Be warned: ugly type and blinking graphics await.) —Savage (whose bearded mug glares at me on my commute every morning, since the local talk-radio outlet has a deal that splatters him and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and Savage and local wannabe Lars Larson on the backs of busses, and there’s an irony in there, somewhere, a sick, stunted little thing that’s the best we can do, these days) also demonstrates an utter lack of familiarity with the middle school American History curriculum by linking favorably to the text of the 1918 US Sedition Act, repealed in 1921 and since repudiated as a grimy nadir, along with the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. We can giggle, if we like, at his historical ignorance (doubtless he would wail and moan about goddless, communist NEA teachers slandering American history—much as he will twenty years from now, the four years of Bush 43’s term long since rubbing elbows with Harding’s and Grant’s at the bottom of the presidential barrel, the odious USA PATRIOT Act having been repealed, joining the US Sedition Act and the Alien and Sedition Acts down there with the slimy fear-mongering stuff that honestly, we see it now, it’s a bad idea, we’ll never do it again, promise); certainly, giggling is better for the health than glowering worrisomely at the millions of nativist brownshirts who presumably hang from his every slaver-drenched word. But I say what the hell. Let him have his Sedition Act. Go back and read it. Forget the latter “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States” language; these are all gimmes, as no one on the anti-war side is mocking the First through Fourth Amendments like Ashcroft, or insulting drafted servicefolks like Rumsfeld. Nah. Check out the opening lines of the act Savage wants to champion:
Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies…
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s known in the biz as a “money quote.” (Thanks, Sully. Oy.)
- Given that the Bush administration has made and conveyed false reports and false statements regarding Iraq at every turn;
- Given that “such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of the American people” is to directly interfere with the operation and success of the military and naval forces of the United States, sending them into a conflict without the international support we require;
- Given that by every sober, informed estimation of the situation, the coming conflict will destabilize the Middle East to an unprecedented degree, providing new waves of recruits and new sources of arms to Al Qaeda, thereby promoting the success of our ostensible enemies, and putting this country in the path of a danger for which we are criminally unprepared;
- Well.
—I think it’s quite clear that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, et al, would be the first to face charges of sedition under the renewal of this act, by golly.
Hey. It could happen. It could.
(Aw, forget the Father Coughlin ref. Father Coughlin’s too good for the likes of Savage.)
This is getting embarrassing.
Los Angeles got its act together and passed one.
Across the country, 113 cities and counties have passed resolutions urging President Bush to work for peace, to exhaust all diplomatic options, to keep military force firmly where it belongs—as the last possible resort. These aren’t by any means binding resolutions that have a hope in hell in and of themselves of affecting anything. But they’re yet another telling sign of the profound distrust growing daily in this country regarding the coming (but not inevitable; never inevitable) war. —If you scan that list, though, you’ll note a rather glaring exception: Portland, Oregon—the most livable city, a progressive’s dream, capital of the People’s Republic of Multnomah County—axed an anti-war resolution on a 2 – 2 vote.
Erik Sten voted for it. Pro-business law-and-order mayor Vera Katz voted for it. Dan Saltzman, though he’s on the record as opposing the idea, ducked the vote that day. Randy Leonard mumbled something about not having enough information, and voted “no.” —Randy. Baby. You got elected to know enough about stuff to make decisions. Okay? That’s what being on a city council is all about. But a tip? You really, truly don’t know enough about something, you abstain. You don’t vote against it. Okay?
And Jim Francesconi—
Francesconi said he saw no point to the resolution. Despite having written a letter as a private citizen to President Bush objecting to unilateral military action. He’s keeping mum about the why, but there’s a number of guesses. Most hinge on a memo sent to the city commissioners the day before the vote from Portland Business Alliance head Kim Kimbrough, which stated, “Time spent by the City Council during Council meetings debating, hearing, or acting upon the proposed resolution only helps to diminish the credibility of the Portland City Council.” Perhaps this is what Leonard didn’t know enough about; why Saltzman skipped the vote; why Francesconi voted no. —If so, well, as the Willamette Week put it, “A single letter from Kimbrough trumped the marchers and the thousands of cards, emails and phone calls City Hall received in support of a resolution against attacking Iraq.”
(“Diminish the credibility of the Portland City Council.” You know what else diminishes that credibility? Aside from ignoring the will of the voters? Having our city’s public education woes held up as an object lesson in the funny pages. What’s that? No connection? It’s not your fault Salem can’t get its act together? We should blame the Brainstorm readers who voted down Measure 28? One city resolution against unilateral military force won’t do a whit to help the kids? —Well, yes. And no. There is no direct benefit; no magic money will suddenly come pouring into any coffers because the city council stands up and says, hey, folks? We over here in Portland just want to go on record as saying this is, you know, a bad idea. But. There is a direct and profound connection between the educational crunch we’re facing all across the country and the 150-some-odd-thousand troops waiting for Turkey to vet our credit history. Doonesbury makes it. Body and Soul spells it out a little more clearly.)
This war is wrong. More and more Yanks are coming to realize this every day and are speaking out against it. One of the ways we have of speaking out is to ask our elected representatives to say something for the official record. City councils and county commissions do this all the time, every day, across the country. Thousands upon thousands of Portlanders stood up to ask our city council to say something for the official record against this war—and they declined.
That is what diminishes the council’s credibility most of all. —Trust me. I think we’re going to have a hard time forgetting this one.
Post no bills.
Okay, so I’m a little late on this one. Better than never. Just before the 15 February march—no, wait, rally—in New York City, the Baghdad Snapshot Crew posted thousands of copies of photos of Iraqi citizens throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. In the course of which, Emilie Clark and Lytle Shaw were arrested and held overnight on misdemeanor charges. Their trial date is set for 13 March.
I’m sure they’ll be pleased to learn that Microsoft got off with a $50 fine. —Of course, no one at Microsoft got arrested, insofar as I can tell. Or at IBM or Nike.
Nike—y’all want corporations to be treated as individuals when it comes to freedom of speech. You still sure about that?
On a clear day you can see forever
You can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Funny thing about waves: give ’em a little time, they come rolling in again.
Can we just cut the fucking ironic humor and ask a simple question?
Ashcroft adds yet another compelling argument to the ever-growing heap in favor of forcibly ejecting him from the office of Attorney General. (It’s a Get Your War On reference. In case you were wondering.)
No blood for duct tape.
From Boing Boing we get this squib from the Washington Post—
That most lamentable duct tape suggestion last week by a Homeland Security official—which drove countless panicked citizens out to buy the product—has been widely derided as useless and pretty crazy.
But maybe not so crazy. Turns out that nearly half—46 percent to be precise—of the duct tape sold in this country is manufactured by a company in Avon, Ohio. And the founder of that company, that would be Jack Kahl, gave how much to the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees in the 2000 election cycle? Would that be more than $100,000?
Sales are through the roof; Kahl’s son (and CEO) reports the duct tape plant’s running 24/7, even though duct tape is a lousy sealant. —And you thought this stuff was beyond the pale.
(Actually, it’s all a grand metaconspiracy to drive sales of tin foil. My father specializes in aluminum engineering; I’d say more, but
Cookie break.
I got mugged by a couple of giggling Girl Scouts coming out of the grocery store. I got away six bucks lighter with a couple of boxes of Samoas perched precariously on top of my bag of groceries.
So I thought I’d point out, you know, that the American Family Association believes that “Girl Scouts seem to revel in their belief that all religious concepts are equal”; the International Organization of Heterosexual Rights is upset because “20 years ago, Girl Scouts learned about how to sew and cook, today they learn how to successfully hold a feminist rally”; the National Review cries that “the Girl Scouts is arguably one of the most politically correct organizations in the country”; and the American Heritage Girls are organizing as an alternative based on Judeo-Christian values (non-denominational)—all of them staunchly following in the 50-year-old footsteps of the American Legion its own bad self.
Makes you want to go buy a truckload, doesn’t it.
What he said.
Don’t bother with my rather incoherent and ill-considered screed of this morning (“The dearth of outrage,” solely in the interest of allowing the folks at home without a program to play along). Instead, go read what Calpundit has to say on the subject, and ponder his questions from both sides of the divide.
It’s not the idle hands that worry me.
Now, George was a good straight boy to begin with, but there was bad blood in him; someway he got into the magic bullets and that leads straight to Devil’s work, just like marihuana leads to heroin. (You think you can take them bullets or leave ’em, do you? Just save a few for your bad days—)
Well, now, we all have those bad days when you can’t shoot for shit.
The more of them magics you use, the more bad days you have without them, so it comes down finally to all your days being bad without the bullets. It’s magics or nothing. Time to stop chippying around and kidding yourself: Kid, you’re hooked, heavy as lead.
And that’s where old George found himself, out there at the crossroads, molding the Devil’s bullets. Now a man figures it’s his bullets, so it will hit what he wants to hit, but it don’t always work that way.
You see, some bullets is special for a single aim. A certain stag, or a certain person, and no matter where you are, that’s where the bullet will end up, and in the moment of aiming, the gun turns into a dowser’s wand and points where the bullet wants to go.
—profoundest apologies to Tom Waits and William Burroughs, of course.
The dearth of outrage.
Matthew Yglesias, reacting to the latest repudiation of earnestly made promises by the Bush administration, says, “Clearly it’s going to take some real pressure from the public to get the administration to stick to its original promises on this point. Pressure I wish liberals were more interested in organizing….”
Screw that.
The profoundly obvious inability of the Bush administration to do the right thing in Iraq is one of the keystones of liberal opposition to the war. This is so much a matter of record that I don’t feel too terribly bad about being pressed for time as I write this, and so only have a smattering of links gleaned from a quickie Google search: Hitch-wannabe Nick Cohen calling this coming betrayal back last summer; the Village Voice with a breakdown of all the spoils-to-be; Madeleine Albright warning us last fall, “It is wrong to suggest democracy and Islam are not compatible… We are not concerned enough about what creates this anti-American feeling. [Americans need to] let them know we support their aspiration for freedom.” —I suddenly feel like I’ve been told I give more of a shit about Augusta than the Taliban. Mattie. Baby. Maybe we’re a little distracted by all the Shock and Awe, and maybe our nuanced arguments about how this war is nothing more than an excuse to replace an old, worn-out strongman with a fresher, newer, more pliable model get lost in the sea of “Attack Iraq? NO!” placards, but trust me. We’re down with the pressure. We’re on message. We’re good to fucking go. We aren’t the problem, here.
What I want to know is, where’s the right?
The principled right, who told us all that this was about bringing democracy? Who tell us that we must strike a blow against Hussein for his oppression of his own people? His gassing of the Kurds? Who tell us that we on the left, marching against this war, are Stalinist stooges standing up for totalitarian regimes and betraying the liberty and self-determination of the Iraqi people? I’ve never taken these arguments seriously—no one with an appreciation of recent American history would—but they’ve always had the fig leaf of the Bush administration’s promises and stated intentions. This latest of many repudiations finally strips that fig leaf away, shreds it, lights it on fire, and stomps the ashes into the dust.
That’s the outrage I’m looking for. The noise that needs to be brought. Left and right standing up together: if this 12-year-old shadow war is finally going to slouch into Baghdad under cover of the greatest powers of darkness, we must make certain that what’s left standing in some small way begins to atone for the horror that’s been wrought. —We both want ballots. We always have. You said it would take bullets. We said there were other ways. But we both agreed on the ballots—and instead, we’re only getting bullets. Bullets on out, as far as the eye can see.
Well?
(I’d even take a touchingly naïve epiphany, like Julian Sanchez’s. —Hell, I’d even take ol’ Ronnie Reagan, at this point.)
National Condom Week—14 – 21 February.
Aw, you knew there had to be a catch. Via the ideologischer unzuverlässigkeit of Uppity Negro, read this:
In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush promised to provide funds for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in Africa and the Caribbean. However, the president’s extremist allies are now demanding that not a dime be spent on condoms as a means of preventing AIDS. Their solution? Abstinence only.
So go on, y’all. Pony up and send a condom to Africa in President “Yeah, baby, I promise I’ll use condoms, I swear, only not this once, you know, because I’m out, yeah, I’m out, and we gotta get this done, right?” Bush’s name. (I don’t think they’re going to be able to fit all of that on the wrapper, but hey.)
The road goes ever on and on…
Last month over at Electrolite, there were some observations about how suddenly the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s first novel, The Wild Shore, seemed much more likely than it had previously. From Messr. Nielsen Hayden’s colleague, Beth Meacham:
...I had a big problem with the basic premise—that the United States had been devastated, forced into economic and technological primitivity by a sudden, overwhelming, tactical nuclear attack, and was now interdicted by the rest of the world. It seemed to me to be an unbelievable premise, the kind of thing where you just had to hold your breath and jump in for the sake of the story and the writing. How could we possibly get from here (20 years ago) to there?
This weekend I read a story in the Los Angeles Times, and was overwhelmed with the sudden knowledge that I now knew the answer to my question so long ago.
I had something of a similar reaction when I read Pacific Edge, the utopian third of Robinson’s Orange County books. Don’t get me wrong, it’s on my rather promiscuous list of favorites, with one of the most heart-breakingly funny suckerpunches of a last line ever; along with Red Mars, it helps define the point on my conceptual map to which I want somehow to muddle through, some day—the lighthouse towards which I’m sailing, to borrow Woody’s father’s metaphor; the hypothetical home at the end of my personal road to utopia. —But the mechanism by which Pacific Edge’s utopia came to be was obscured—rather appropriately, perhaps (the underlying hows of it being more important to Robinson’s point than the superficial who-did-whats-to-whom), but still frustratingly; apparently, We the People finally just got fed up one day and told Them the Corporations to stop with the bullshit, already. It all seemed (not unlike Green Mars’s constitutional carnival: realpolitik as science fiction convention) to spring fully grown from the forehead of some Zeus ex machina.
Until this weekend, when I started to see the numbers come in, and was myself suddenly overwhelmed with an unexpected surge of something that’s been in rather short supply, these days. —War may seem inevitable (in a very real sense, of course it is: we’ve been at war with the Iraqis for 12 years running), but it is already providing a focal point for something unprecedented, rich and strange, something altogether larger: an object lesson for more and more people around the world of something we’ve all found too easy to forget of late—how we can get things done together that we can’t get done alone.
So just, you know. Stop with the bullshit, already. We the People are getting testy.
Speechful.
In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.
One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.
But to turn one’s frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.
Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq—a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15—this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare—this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.
We are truly “sleepwalking through history.” In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.
—Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va), via Medley.
Speechless.
One mantra from the Bush administration since it launched its military campaign in Afghanistan 16 months ago has been that the United States will not walk away from the Afghan people.
President Bush has even suggested a Marshall plan for the country, and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, will visit Washington later this month.
But in its budget proposals for FY 2003, the White House did not explicitly ask for any money to aid humanitarian and reconstruction costs in the impoverished country.
The chairman of the committee that distributes foreign aid, Jim Kolbe, says that when he asked administration officials why they had not requested any funds, he was given no satisfactory explanation, but did get a pledge that it would not happen again.
—“Afghanistan omitted from US aid budget,” the BBC, via Atrios.
Transparency.
The Daily Howler on what Brit Hume said on Monday (and repeated here in this Tuesday Grapevine column):
A top strategist for Al Gore’s 2000 president campaign says the Gore camp deliberately caused a traffic jam on a major artery in southern New Hampshire on primary day that year to keep Bill Bradley voters away from the polls. The disclosure came from Gore strategist Michael Whouley, who said the Gore team had seen exit polls indicating a large number of independents, many who live in the up scale suburbs, were turning out to vote for Bradley.
So, they organized a caravan to clog traffic on Interstate 23 late in the day to keep potential Bradley voters away from voting places. The disclosure was made at a Harvard symposium and picked up first by the Boston Phoenix.
A little rubber is meeting the road on this one in the blogosphere, despite Whouley’s adamant denial of the Phoenix’s account. What you should really stop and think about, for a moment, is why, exactly, the éminence grise of Fox News would go about hyping an easily discredited story that links Al Gore with three-year-old political dirty tricks in New Hampshire.
How very… interesting.
(The new question becomes: why on earth would l’éminence grise strive so mightily to discredit Colin “For this I blew my creditability” Powell? Anyone see anything interesting in those tea leaves?)
Politically?
Politically, the most damaging criticism is that a consumption tax could obliterate the idea of a progressive tax system and shift much of the tax burden from the rich to middle-income people and the poor.
—White House Floats Idea of Dropping Income Tax Overhaul, New York Times, 8 February 2003.
Politically? How about morally? Ethically? Hello?
Oh. Right.
(Yes, old news. It’s being a week, okay? More later, if and when.)
