President Ladybug

Rob Brezsny is messing with my life.
Brezsny, the writer (inventor) weirdo, wunderkind, thinker, rememberer and official forgetter of all things irrelevant, author of Free Will Astrology (sample horoscope for Cancer – my sign – this week: “Five years ago, artist Dale Chihuly shipped 64 tons of Alaskan ice to Jerusalem. He used it to erect a giant wall in the place where the Arab and Jewish sections of the city joined. The desert heat melted his preposterous construction in three days. Treat this as an apt symbol for a situation that’s going on in your vicinity, Cancerian. There is an improbable barrier between two parts of your life that should be connected. That barrier has now begun to collapse at a rapid rate, and will be gone soon as long as you and yours don’t make a foolish attempt to try to shore it up…”) is also creator of the concept of Pronoia.
His recently published book ‘Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia’ (subtitle “How the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings”) and the current source of much of my frustration. It is impossible to read it without taking in and taking on a number of the wildly appealing, and simultaneously crazy as shit ideas.
Ostensibly emanating from an organization known as the Beauty and Truth Laboratory (pretty much Brezsny and his like-minded pals) the tome contains page after page of good news. And it’s real news; the fact that no matter what you absorb during the supper-hour news broadcast, or even a cursory perusal of your daily paper, using impeccable sources, Brezsny reports that crime is on the decline, teen death and teen pregnancy is at an all-time low, dropout rates have dropped, as well as the cheering fact that the introduction of Viagra has decreased the rate of animal killing as Rhinoceros horn, bear penis, whale sperm (and whatever other creepy rare animal byproducts have been placed on the alter of male virility over the years) as nothing really beats the ease – or the efficacy – of the little blue pill.
He has chapters that aid one in strategizing legal and wildly positive pranks, reminders that though life always gives you exactly what you need when you need it, it doesn’t necessarily give you exactly what you want when you want it. Just as the inherent truth – and the potential for genuinely seeing your life and it’s singularly wacky course from a different angle entirely (and one that makes you think you might actually enjoy thinking that way) he slips in a couple of pages from the ‘Pronoia News Network’ which details factoids concerning everything from the amount of love washing over the planet at every second of every day (the World Health Organization reports that over 100 million acts of sexual intercourse involving more than 200 million partners take place on earth every 24 hours; you could just take it as read, or appreciate Brezsny’s spin which is to calculate just how much euphoria is being generated if even half of those encounters are inspired by love. Heck – a tenth!)
Right now I’m on the waiting list at the library for a book he recommends that threatens to prop my mind open even further.
Titled ‘The Diving Bell and The Butterfly’ by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the memoir relates the story of the 43 year old French editor who suffered a stroke that while it left his brain undamaged, paralyzed his entire body save his left eye. Using his eyeball (though actually, mostly the lid) Bauby was able to dictate his memoir over a two year period solely through eye blinks.
Critics have called it ‘startling’, ‘inspirational’ and ‘a jewel’.
With two hands, a fully working body and the entire world at my disposal through the internet, I have trouble coming up with more than one original blog idea more than once a week. This week of course will not count, since all the ideas contained herein owe their genesis to Brezsny. Great.
And I was intending to write about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers (seems this paragon of all things legal whoopsed and forgot to pay her annual bar dues – the legal ones! – and was ineligible to actually practice as a lawyer in the District of Columbia… but as any fool knows, she’s nominated for a judgeship, not a lawyer-ship, so, like, what?) and about the recent PBS presentation of the New York Open Center’s conference on ‘The Real Agenda of the Religious Right’ – it’s absolutely filled to the brim and running over with blood curdling facts about Dominionism and Reconstruction and The Council for National Policy and the fact that close advisors to the President really, really, really believe in The End of Days, really – and I wanted to write about how though Toronto somehow managed to pull back from the brink of allowing sharia law to form a legitimate part of Ontario’s judicial system, the same cannot be said for Iraq, where due to concessions made by the American government in order to enlist cooperation from reactionary religious leaders, the new constitution – when it finally makes sharia the basis for national legislation – will no doubt sideline Iraqi women more effectively than even they were during Saddam Hussein’s tortuous reign.
I wasn’t actually thinking of writing about Saddam’s trial because really, what’s the point?
But even with those other thoughts and issues swishing and sloshing about in my head (as you now know, I’m a water sign) as I read Brezsny’s book, all I can think of is how much better my time is spent pondering the implications of Lucius Cervantes’ contention (as quoted in ‘Pronoia’) that “… the higher a woman’s IQ, the more she is likely to be masculine in outlook. The higher a man’s IQ, the more likely he is to be feminine in outlook.” Cool.
Or marveling at the fact that a pig’s orgasm can last a full thirty minutes – or that the ladybird beetle has sex for up to nine hours at a times, wherein the males are capable of three orgasms in one session, each an hour and a half long. Yikes.
(It’s interesting to note that somewhere in the next few pages, Brezsny quotes Guneli Gun from her book ‘On the Road to Baghdad’: “the world is run by those who can’t make love, or those who do it badly. That’s why the world is in trouble.” Imagining the world run by ladybugs is at the very least... stimulating...)
Pronoia the book is simply stuffed with unusual and outrageous ideas for freeing up (or jettisoning entirely) your warped preconceived notions, your prejudices, judgments, negative fantasies and much of the material we cling to in order to justify whatever self-pity we indulge in at whatever rate of frequency we indulge. You simply cannot hold in your mind both the thought that life sucks and you never have any fun, when you learn of a man who writes an inspiring book with exactly one functioning body part – his eyelid. Believe me I’ve tried.
I’ve started making lists of the ideas I most like and am running out of yellow legal pad paper as the list grows longer with each turning page; I’m fascinated by the results of the poll that asked the question “Does reality exist?” and collated the answers thusly: Yes 42%; No 27% - and those leftovers who insisted that while their reality exists, no one else’s does.
Philip K. Dick said “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Did you know that Shakespeare coined 1,700 words, including: besmirch, dauntless, dwindle, gnarled, hobnob, lackluster (or, if you're Canadian, as am I, lacklustre) madcap, pander, rancorous, sanctimonious, tranquil, bloodstained, leapfrog, gossip and fortune-teller? I didn't. But I'm proud to say I've used them all... and I know they've made me a better writer. I've made up a few words in my time (or maybe just used alternate, though deliberate and unique spellings) but this information has given me the courage to create more. They'll be... Brezsnylistic - Brezsnylicious even!
I find it beyond fascinating (as did Rob Brezsny apparently) to contemplate Ray Kurzweil’s study of the nature of societal change. Centuries ago, people didn’t really observe the world changing at all – their lives, their parents lives, their grandparent’s lives and so on, all had more or less the same life experience – and expected that their grandchildren would live pretty much the same as well. We know things change – but as Kurweil relates, what most people don’t consider is the fantastic rate of change today. He writes:
“The whole 20th century was like 25 years of change at today’s rate of change. In the next 25 years we’ll make four times the progress you saw in the 20th century. And we’ll make 20,000 years of progress in the 21st century, which is almost a thousand times more technical change than we saw in the 20th century.”
This is what makes me want to live longer – not following the trial of Saddam Hussein, or the panel quizzing Harriet Miers on what she REALLY thinks about abortion and the Lord Jesus Christ, or even the final destination of Toronto’s much unloved, much bandied about garbage.
I want to study the life of Mitzi Nichols of Virginia Beach who anonymously donated a kidney to a stranger in 2001 and waited a mere three years for karma to deliver a $500,000.00 lottery win. Yay karma!
Or to rethink Lady Godiva, whose naked ride through the streets of Coventry in 1057 was not (as many have erroneously noted) to inspire leagues of university engineering students, but rather to live up to the dare her assessor husband posed – that if she did, he would abolish all taxes on the local citizenry. As history reports, she did – and he did.
Other naked acts of charity include the 600 women living in oil rich Nigeria, who launched a protest against ChevronTexaco, demanding they plow back some of their profits into the local impoverished community. Their method of protest was to commit a ‘traditional shaming gesture’ by taking off their clothes; Nigerians consider the nudity of women to be a damning protest that shames those at whom the action is directed. ChevronTexaco gave in and hired local workers to build schools and electrical and water systems.
These days I am being encouraged to fear everything from a terrorist attack to acid reflux to avian flu, but Brezsny (the intriguing bastard) has now elicited from me a desire to experience the mind bending fear known as ‘The Stendahl Syndrome’. The syndrome named after the French novelist who wrote about his own breakdown in 1817; a description that echoes down the years and still strikes individuals today, as visitors to the miraculous art treasures collected over the centuries in the city of Florence Italy, sometimes fall apart in the presence of such overwhelming beauty – panicking in front of a painting by Raphael or collapsing in front of Michelangelo’s David, before being ambulanced away to the psychiatric ward of the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital.
If this is an example of shit happening, this is precisely the sort of shit I would like to be deluged with.
Thinking about this stuff makes me happy. And happiness, (though bargain priced at precisely $4.9 million by researchers at Yahoo Personal Finance) comes free to me through the magic of the Toronto Public Library, the relatively small cost of the light I need to read it provided me by Toronto Hydro (who are planning to send me a rebate on my electricity bill) and the small brown dog who sits patiently by, pining for both a treat and a walk, but sensing my passionate intensity and attention to the page, only bugs me on average of seven or eight times an hour.
Bliss.
I’m sure the effects of my recently slightly sprung open mind will dissipate and I will start getting an upset stomach and a nervous twitch (sure signs I’ve clicked across images of the American President, or accidentally landed on CNN rather than The Comedy Network) and be anxious to read the op-ed page of the New York Times and to pump my fist and cry “Yes! Yes!” every time I even think about The Daily Show.
But for now I’ll just remain calm and think deep thoughts and accept that this mind of mine that cannot successfully hold two thoughts, (the test of a first rate intelligence according to F. Scott Fitzgerald is the ability to affect that balance) has for this moment anyway, merely a singular ambition:
To hold one really good one.

Life to Smoochy (War and Remembrance Part III)

Yogi Berra said it’s not over until it’s over.
Never consider a story over until the very last page has been turned, the cover clapped shut, the author pronounced dead and the last nail driven forcefully into his coffin even as it is being lowered into the soon-to-be-sealed and paved over grave.
Because things might change. And the past might take on different and even new memories to reminisce over in the future.
Just this last July, in an absolute orgy of reminiscing, I wrote a few stories about my youth, focusing on my early teen years and my experiences in London – a time imbued with memories so vivid and clear, that even just writing of them made them feel nearly close enough to touch.
And it probably wasn’t the international location, or the experiences in and of themselves; I believe those memories are still so immediate because of the age I was when they happened. At fourteen (going on fifteen) I was just beginning that transition into adulthood… the part that included boys and kissing and first love and the excitement of the possibilities of all that that meant.
(Okay. Puberty. I’m writing about the breathless un-bosomings of an adolescent girl. Laugh if you like – or sneer in contempt; if you don’t have a few adolescent un-bosomings of your own, I’m just so sorry.)
On July 14th 2005 (you can check it out in the archives – ‘War and Remembrance Part II’) I wrote about the International School I attended and the travel perks that come with being enrolled in a school poised on the brink of Europe. The class French trip to Calais began the adventures, but the Swiss ski trip made the much yearned for possibilities real as I fell into an endless series of passionate smooches with the boy I most wanted to smooch.
It was so exciting (I wrote) that I was surprised that I didn’t explode or burst into spontaneous flames from pure excitement and joy.
It was that good.
But then it got that bad.
On the boat train back to London, Wade Cunningham (for that was his totally cool name) grew distant and by the end of the trip was flirting with another girl. My romance was over, my first love finished, my heart became a withered little organ that must have taken entire months to heal.
I wrote in July that though I was over it now (31 years later!) and I had since been kissed and romanced by men I came to love more, I didn’t think I’ve since felt so purely happy, or so completely heart-stoppingly, blood-thrillingly excited as I had on that school ski trip in 1974.
True story.
But then about two weeks ago the story came full circle as I reconnected with Wade (sigh) Cunningham through his sister (and my classmate) Caren, who found me on one of those High School Reunion web sites that have become so popular in the past few years.
Strangely, even rhapsodizing about all that dusty unrequited love that had long ago bloomed in my adolescent bosom didn’t make me search for him – to be honest, it didn’t even occur to me… or perhaps if I thought about it, I feared that I wouldn’t have remained even a faded memory to him. After all, he was seventeen! Way too grown up and mature to remember a skinny little kid like me.
But I would have been wrong to think so.
He remembered. He remembered things I didn’t remember (even with all my romantic and fevered rememberings) and he apologized for the past hurt (long forgiven, I assured him) and gallantly told me he’d ended our ten day love affair to protect his own heart from the pain of one day losing me. (Nice touch, eh?)
What a guy. Wade Cunningham. Sigh.
We’ve written back and forth and are still only scraping the surface of the mountain of experiences and memories that have played out between then and now.
And now we go on from here – he and I and his sister Caren and Lisa Bing and Rachel Younger and John Gross, (who we are aware of out there in the ether) and hopefully many more from back then; that patchwork group of disparate students who attended the now long defunct Dwight Franklin International School in 1973 and 1974.
We’re planning a reunion sometime soon and Wade has even offered to zoom up here to Canada to apologize for breaking my fourteen year old’s heart in person, but first he must go to the South Pole.
(Isn’t that interesting? I’ve been assured it’s not diversionary…)
So March, maybe March we’ll all get together in person and compare memories and current lives and describe the paths each of us took to get where we are now.
I’ve told Wade my heart belongs to another, but I can’t rule out at least a single nostalgic smooch – a smooch to remember the past and to celebrate the present, and to firmly place the smooch in future memories.
Who knows? It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Cuddlefish

Like the proverbial iceberg, the largest part of the story, the information and facts about the similarly mostly submerged Giant Squid are finally coming to the surface with increasing regularity.
Just last week a series of photographs taken by a couple of Japanese scientists from the National Science Centre and the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association, both in Tokyo, revealed Architeuthis in all his strange and usually secret glory, frolicking in the cold and dark waters of the North Pacific.
As shy and elusive as President Bush at the outset of the Katrina disaster, the estimated 59 foot carnivorous cephalopod made a surprise appearance and revealed himself/herself/itself to the scientists as he/she/it attempted to grapple with a baited hook equipped with a camera some 900 meters below the choppy surface.
The photographs show an enormous squid wrapping it’s tentacles (two) and arms (eight) around the line which eventually got the better of at least one of the squid’s appendages, offering the scientists a close up look at the be-suction-cupped tentacle, still writhing somewhat in its death throes, but fresh and pink and offering the first real glimpse of Giant Squid flesh not long dead and not washed up on a beach, the way most of the really large squid findings have by necessity taken place.
Then just a few days later came the news from another set of scientists observing the heretofore similarly mysterious sex life of the giant members of the extended mollusk family – the larger female and (slightly – these things are relative) smaller male who combine in their own unique age old fashion to produce tiny little baby Giant Squid in a mating ritual that sounds as dangerous as it does revolting.
According to today’s online ‘The Independent’, a series of Giant Squid washed up on a beach in Spain revealed details including the length of the male Giant Squid’s sexual appendage (a horrifying 8 feet of sharp and nasty squid passion attached to a further 18 meters of squidgey squid reality) with which, according to scientists, the male squid attempt to impale the female – piercing her on the arm in order to impregnate her.
As you can imagine, there’s a certain amount of thrashing about, as well as a significant amount of danger which includes male squids often accidentally piercing themselves, other male squids, or just about anything that resembles whatever it is about the female of his species that attracts his attentions so.
Eek. But it’s all information – more insights into the wild and wacky and downright weird world of one of the planet’s least known and or understood creatures. It’s all grist to my mill – I love the Giant Squid and have been fascinated by him/her/it since I became aware of the genus and was able to go online and research more beginning about eight years ago.
It’s not so much that I’d like to get up close and personal with this creature that belongs to the same family of invertebrates as the octopus, the nautilus and the cuttlefish – I have no desire whatsoever to cuddle one of those fish; but they’re so mysterious, so creepy, so weird and fundamentally alien that I can’t help but imagine their life and style of living.
I learned the legends – the tales straight out of Jules Verne that purported to be real: about squids grappling warships into the deeps, about sailors caught and eaten by a school of invertebrates that jigged for the men as easily as a fisherman jigs for a tame octopus. About monsters seen and measured by the length of vessel that the measurer was on – one hundred and ten feet thought the chap back in the early part of the 20th century.
I’ve read the speculation about the relationship between squid and whales – right whales and sperm whales and grey whales doing battle with the creatures whose tactic it is to drown the whales, pulling them down and down until the mammoth mammal suffocates. Until recently, the best way to guess potential squid size was by the size of the suction cup-scarred whale skin and enormous squid beaks found in the stomachs of the those orcas who survived at least that encounter with death.
In the last couple of years we’ve learned of the Colossal Squid – assumed to be larger than your common or garden (Octopus’s Garden one assumes) Giant variety, a pretty distressing sounding creature matching size with carnivorous power, sporting fully two razor sharp beaks and tentacles covered in sharp tooth filled suction cups.
There’s also a fairly recently discovered squid-type creature which comes equipped with ten indistinguishable appendages (in the regular squid, the tentacles and arms are easily recognized, the arms being considerably longer) which radiate from the body like spokes on a wheel. Each has a sharply bent elbow from which the rest of the arm hangs straight down. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something queerly disgusting about a tentacle with an elbow joint.
To complete this picture of the estimated 23 foot long creature only a mother could love (if she didn’t eat it first) it has two gigantic fins that stick out either side of its body and that flap like elephant ears as it propels its weird self along.
According to one of the scientists that had an opportunity to study photos of the peculiar animal back in 2003, “New species are a dime a dozen in the deep sea, and I suspect there are a lot of very weird things down there.”
No kidding.
But of course the reason we know so little about these creatures is because of the oceanic depths in which their lives typically take place. For the largest of their species, rising to the surface, losing the pressure on their bodies and blood so necessary to survival, the squid cannot really live in our world so close to the top, but as technology improves, we’re finding it little by agonizingly little, easier to find our way down to his.
But talk about weird, creepy and fundamentally alien – little as we know about what lives in the deepest darkest troughs of the ocean, would that we knew so much about the murky workings of the American Government, the specific methods and means used to run that government, go to war or respond to disaster.
I think we’ve all been assuming (hoping) that the current administration’s depth was similar to that of the iceberg or the Giant Squid – huge, hidden and substantial. But maybe the truth is that there’s less than meets the eye. Maybe the truth is as insubstantial and potentially invisible as icebergs at the North Pole, those that through global warming are melting faster than the truckloads of ice some friendly folk recently attempted to ship to Louisiana and points thereabout.
(Unfortunately getting to ‘thereabout’ turned into a runaround that ended with tons of ice being re-routed to cold storage where it’s being stockpiled for the next disaster. Current cost of the ice fiasco? About a cool one hundred million dollars. U.S. dollars that is.)
Consider the fact that in revealing the inadequacies of the action plan to aid in the latest natural disasters even with sufficient notice, the parties supposedly responsible were effectively about as useful as a squid on dry land. Or in the White House for that matter.
One of the weirdest images we’ve yet been privy to in the human world is the latest vision of the latest new, improved President – the compassionate hero who made seven trips to areas devastated by Katrina and Rita… the minute his approval numbers hit an all time low.
The guy who until recently was urging Americans to consume and buy as much oil and energy as possible has discovered conservation (hallelujah!) and is urging Americans to conserve – to drive less, form carpools, take public transit, turn down the air conditioning and turn off the lights.
The same President who continues to visit the storm ravaged homes and drilling platforms and refinieries down south in gas guzzling Air Force One ($83,000.00 to fill, $6,000.00 an hour to fly) or surrounded by an extended SUV driving entourage,eachof which sucks gasoline at the rate of approximately 22 miles to the gallon.
The President and energy conservation: it’s not a glove-like fit if you know what I’m saying.
And the Presidential tentacles reach nowhere near so far as where or when they’ve been needed; from New York to Afghanistan and from Iran to Iraq and now to the French Quarter, it’s clear now that neither his reach nor his grasp have come close to meeting or exceeding his cocky hubris.
Weird things down there? In Washington you mean? I’ll say.
So weird I think I'd rather smile and kiss a cuttlefish than grapple with a President whose mind and motivations are as creepy and alien – and still as mysterious to me - as those of the Giant Squid.

A Daddy in Aspic

I caught a glimpse of my father the other day, which is a pretty neat trick seeing as he’s been dead for ten years.
I claim no special powers – I’m not psychic (though I did predict J.D. Fortune would win Rockstar INXS, but to be honest, that could have been a fluke), I am not a Ghost Whisperer, neither am I a Medium, nor one prone to intimate communication with The Almighty.
I am not a busty TV star or the President of the United States, but I did recently have an experience that brought me into full living, breathing contact with the reality of my long dead dad that has left me feeling shaky and unsteady days later.
And like most earth-shattering encounters, the circumstances could not have been more prosaic.
I was at a cocktail party as the guest of a friend who had recently purchased a condo in an as-yet unfinished development in North Toronto. Very swank and with all the mod cons, the event held in the corporation’s model suite was designed ostensibly for the future neighbours to meet and mingle, though as it soon became clear, it was actually purpose-designed to send a not so subtle message that discounts on ‘luxury upgrades’ would be offered to owners who roped in hot new prospects for the crack sales team. (A sales team whose crackling energy looked sharp enough to wound. Those folks were not fooling around.)
Still, it was a chance to support the friend and get a glimpse of her future condo’s future potential – and not incidentally to sample as much domestic wine and delish hors d’oeuvre as you could liberate from the attractive gay wait staff; what those caterers couldn’t do with a sprig of asparagus and a loop of chive I wouldn’t even begin to speculate.
There were tiny rare roast beef shavings sitting cockily atop miniature cornbread cakes, garnished with just a dot of fragrant aioli. Goose liver on some sort of miraculous buttery organic triscuit, topped with a trembling golden cube of aspic. And as for the bite sized mini mountains molded of braised shitake mushroom and sweet onion, well suffice it to say that you wouldn’t have wanted to come between me and them. Not and retain your dignity and all your fingers that is.
And thank heaven the food was good, because I wasn’t buying and there were certainly no romantic prospects circulating; apart from the tuxedo-clad, likely gay cellist plinking and sawing earnestly in the prettily decorated den (or second bedroom! or office! or gift-wrapping nook!), besides the friend and myself, virtually everyone there was of an age that suggested preservation in aspic might make an increasingly attractive alternative to further deterioration.
They were old is what I’m saying. Old and rich and practically counting off the seconds to the end of the current Toronto season, so they could wing it to Florida for the next.
All too soon the wait staff were absorbed back into whatever holding pen they’d originally emerged from (the source of all that was savoury and good) and the developers and sales team lined up in front of the miniature architectural model in the foyer so they could sing the praises of the development that by our listening constituted our payment for the supper.
Bah, blah, blah.
I never feel so completely adolescent as when I’m left stranded in a room full of grown ups listening to guff like this. I’m sure there was value in the various missives, but all I got out of it (in between trying to crack up the pregnant woman shifting weightily from one foot to the other right next to me: I wanted to see her bursting through the firmly rooted crowd like floodwater through a Louisiana levee in a headlong beeline to the bathroom) was that those who chose not to frogmarch relatives, friends and other suckers into the gaping maw thinly disguised as realtors, would be punished with cut-rate mismatched marble floors, paper thin granite countertops and the leftover wallpaper samples that would scream: ‘so last year!’ to the lonely unfortunates forced to make do with the 'Basic Plan'.
I don’t know how long the speeches lasted because somewhere in between elbowing the pregnant lady and trying to silently pop a piece of gum out of one of those blister packs that tend to explode like a gunshot in church (I simply did not have enough to share with the rest of the congregation) I saw my father.
Right in front of me, close enough to touch – I could almost imagine I smelled him: a combination of fabric softener (his housekeeper always put too much Downy in the rinse) and the Pear’s soap he preferred, subtly imbued with just a hint of medicinal mentholatum.
Above the collar of an Oxford blue cotton shirt (itself tucked into a pair of pressed khakis, held up by a tightly buckled belt – he’d never had any sort of bum to speak of) it was surely the back of his neck; a thick and ruddy affair holding up a giant bald head (the Wilson’s have giant heads, it’s a fact) ringed with a pure white fringe of hair, choppily trimmed and in desperate and immediate need of another.
I’d have known the back of those ears anywhere (after all, I was the one who had trimmed and styled his remaining strands…) all pink and bursting with a wild and wiry grey growth.
And his pate – a few stray hairs still clinging pathetically to his softly tanned scalp, the age spots and freckles like familiar landmarks on an otherwise blasted landscape. I could see the pores and the texture of his skin and the dynamic life force that in comparing the living to the inanimate is somewhat similar to identifying the real turtle soup from merely the mock.
I wanted to touch him.
I wanted to grab him and breathe him in and feel the solid warmth of life and energy. I wanted to look at his worn and funny face and deep into his faded blue eyes and I wanted to tell him so much that had just that moment occurred to me.
I thought I had done my grieving long ago, but I realize now that recently that grief was just as easy and tender as missing an old photo or home movie: a one or two dimensional twinge at the most. A softening – but a comfortable reaction, easy and familiar and nothing like this stab of reality that threatened to overwhelm me to the point of public humiliation.
I had difficulty swallowing and hot tears were building behind my eyes and I couldn’t believe I might very soon be reduced to a sobbing, braying heap in the middle of an expensively outfitted pretend apartment, surrounded nearly completely by elderly strangers. It was just too awful.
Because it wasn’t him of course. It was just some man. Some sixty or seventy-something old article, alive and pink, with blood coursing through his veins and breath sliding easily – so easily! – in and out of his lungs. And in fact beyond the skin colour and shape and shade of his silver tonsure, he was nothing really very much like my father at all.
(For one thing, dad would have let his trousers droop as low as gangsta rapper’s before he’d cinch in his belt. He was above all, a creature well aware of each and every physical comfort and he tolerated neither the chafe nor the squeeze...)
It was the magic of the flesh.
The glow and vibrancy and multi-dimensional corporeal reality of the living that made my past efforts in remembering him comparable to the literary similarities between Beatle Bailey and War and Peace.
I remember and miss him now. Not his memory and not his photo and not even the sly and funny (sometimes rude) and insightful letters he always wrote and mailed to me no matter the advances of technology. I remember the guy who wrote them, and right now, I miss him so much.
Back in the model suite I surreptitiously blew my nose on a cocktail napkin and pushed firmly through the crowd on my way to the exit. I wanted to come home and think about him and get to work on that little deconstruction project I’ve been neglecting for the last decade.
I’ve got to grieve the real man, not the dying or dead or vaguely remembered or charmingly posed and photographed guy.
My memories are emerging from the aspic now, and sharp and bitter as it is reliving this loss, it is also deeply nourishing. And even delicious.

Whores, heroes and hobgoblins

People never change – at least that’s my unchanging opinion.
The question came up recently in a community of people I regularly speak with, and try as we might, we none of us could come up with a single instance of anyone we know who has actually made fundamental, character-core, personality-altering changes.
Sure, there’s a maturing process – people who buckle down after college… cut their hair… take on responsibility… don’t have to be told to take out the garbage or cut the lawn, or go to the dentist.
But the kid who would betray you in high school, pull the wings off flies, and bitterly blame others or cruel fate for every slight or disappointment, or in the alternative, always see the positive side of things (or at least be open to the hope that things might change) will likely continue to do so in a variety of more sophisticated ways, no matter the patina of respectability or grown-upedness they cloak themselves in as the years roll down that great cosmic bowling alley.
(My example was Doubleya; there he is I said, a former alcoholic, drug addicted, careless, spoilt frat boy, whose entire experience of the working world was both provided through - and subsequently bailed out by – his family; who quit cocaine and drinking, found religion, became President of the United States, yet hasn’t changed a whit or a bit. He’s still the same careless, self-absorbed, oblivious frat boy he always was. He’s just sober now.
(It wasn’t a lack of Jesus or a surfeit of alcohol that made him such an asshole back in the day – he was (and is) who he was. And is.)
Coincidentally, further proof of the axiomatic nature of character maintenance was revealed in a couple of stories published today in Canadian newspapers.
In one, a guy who was unjustly accused, tried, found guilty and imprisoned for the alleged crime of sodomizing and murdering his four year old niece twelve years ago, appears to remain the same confused and mystified young man at the age of thirty-four that he was back then; still trusting and believing in his mom, still missing the “.. smart, mischievous, funny” little niece who was “very special to me.”
That his life will never be the same goes without saying; that any potential the massively tall and goofy looking kid who didn’t fit in then (and surely won’t fit in now) has long been destroyed is an undeniable truth, and that his guilt was established by the consistently criminally mismanaged working practices of the doctor (Charles Smith, formerly Chief Pathologist at Sick Kids) who is responsible for rather more than a handful of similar horrors – and was solved by the same practice as were many of the others: by looking through his desk drawers for the exonerating evidence – is just par for this poor man’s particularly unlucky course.
One can only hope that his innocence, his exoneration, whatever cash settlement he receives for his wrongful incarceration and any subsequent civil cases his lawyers launch on his behalf against the deleterious doctor somehow allow him the peace and retro-kindness he deserves.
He probably won’t change, but maybe a little of his luck finally will.
And then there’s the other story; the story of a man himself known for the charming observation that “there’s no whore like an old whore” (and what does that little aphorism reveal about the aphorizer?) who is quoted today through his spokesthingy as being horrified, hurt, regretful, disbelieving, surprised, flabbergasted and shocked to the core that some of his choicest and juiciest (not to mention cruel and patronizing) opinions were published by the journalist with whom he shared them.
It’s just so bizarre to hear the moanings and wailings of a man forced to apologize to those whom he slandered – though whether he knew it or not, we pretty much knew what he thought; he’s not so subtle as he thinks – his excuse being that he thought none of it was for the record, that it was just harmless late night chitchat between two dear old friends.
Nice chat.
Nice friends.
The fact that this dear old friend was also the renowned author of a significant number of tomes that blew the lid off a significant number of pretty high profile people and institutions over the past couple of decades, and that at least some of the conversations they held were for the express purpose of laying the groundwork for a Mulroney biography, appeared to be beside the point.
Brian Mulroney, as he lies in his bed of pain, recovering from a serious pancreatic episode, now reportedly pauses only between bouts of clutching his belly and cursing the name of Peter C. Newman to pick up the phone and apologize to, amongst others, former Prime Minister Kim Campbell (she lost the subsequent election by being too busy “screwing her boyfriend”) Clyde Wells (a “son of a bitch” lacking in principle – pot! kettle!) and Pat Carney (irrational). He’d have to telephone the sons of the former Prime Minister, the late Pierre Trudeau to apologize for accusing their father of destroying Canada through his personal vanity, so that he, Mulroney would have to “come along and save it.” He might just as well save himself that unreturned voicemail – anything Justin or Alexandre might have to say was mercifully covered by the man who knew how to shuffle off his mortal coil unemcumbered by a series of late night unbosomings to a journalist well versed in the popularity of well-researched literary scandal.
‘The Secret Mulroney Tapes’, subtitled Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister by Peter C. Newman will soon be available for all to peruse; to measure the claim by the author that the bad is tempered by a number of anecdotes through which Newman believes people will interpret the lantern-jawed libeler as charming and likeable and good.
Personally, I think that particular ‘good’ ship has sailed.
You see nothing changes. Mulroney has been bitching for decades that no one appreciated him (if he had a brother, you know who mom would have liked best) but was certain that history would tell a different tale – that his accomplishments and character would be judged more fairly and squarely in the future than in the blistering heat of the unforgiving moment. That he would be loved and appreciated and recognized for all the great and good he did.
Just goes to show - there’s no fool like an old fool.

So I guess what I'm saying is "Ditto"...

In ways and with methods more powerful than any speech yet made, the Bush administration has finally succeeded in demonstrating one of the most important tenets of the Republican philosophy: that government is surely the problem, not the solution.
If those devastated by Katrina needed any more proof that the last place they should have looked for assistance in their time of most desperate need was Washington, they have it in the absolute abortion that was the response from federal agencies, from the administration and from the President himself.
(One wonders if he’ll be able to enjoy another vacation in Crawford Texas, steeped as it will no doubt be in memories of the moment when the entire world went looking for leadership and found it literally on holiday. One worries that actually, he’ll probably have no problems with it at all.)
From the criminal time wasting of spending the first week screwing around deciding which agency, which jurisdiction, or which authority was either responsible or prepared to sign off to another, the south sank as the leadership fiddled around.
From the unconscionable decision NOT to send the nearby (at anchor off the Gulf Coast according to the Chicago Tribune) U.S.S Bataan in to help – a ship equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the technology to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, to the President’s own opinion conveyed through Diane Sawyer that any looting – be it for plasma screen TV’s or a tin of tuna – be considered a crime subject to punishment, each and every decision and non-decision has revealed the government of the United States of America to be at best incompetent, at worst, deliberately so.
When the appropriately funereal speed with which the President reacted to the Katrina crisis is compared to the urgency with which he flew to the bedside of brain dead Terry Schiavo, the priorities of this administration are as clear as the Mississippi is muddy – and now glowing red with the blood and human detritus that will be food for the catfish for decades to come.
But this President has always been more interested in the unborn or the near-dead than with the living or the suffering. While this government has sieved off the youngest and most vulnerable of the next generation of soldiers to fight terrorism thousands of miles away (“Better than fighting it at home” goes the contemptuous thinking) it’s now clear that terrorism probably couldn’t be fought at home – so decimated and depleted are the supports to genuine homeland security.
So what do Americans get for their tax dollars? Well, they don’t get a lot of disaster relief (at least, not if they’re actually living in the disaster; those who’ve lost business, property, and valuable commodities will no doubt be bailed out faster than a stranded Louisianan can out-swim an alligator) they don’t get to get on with their lives after serving an agreed upon time in the military (unless they never signed up in the first place, or in times past were able to avoid a draft – those folks can pretty much do whatever they wish) they don’t get to have a Supreme Court that reflects and balances the political make-up of the country (unless they’re right wing republicans – in which case, it’s party time for their team; btw: how quickly was John Roberts sent in to replace the late Rehnquist? Why, overnight appears to be the time frame – the President can move when it matters… to him) and they don’t get anything resembling affordable and equal access to health care (unless they already have enough money to actually be able to afford it out of pocket – then it’s free; sort of like all the free stuff Paris Hilton gets, that’s the way it works.)
But they do get a President obsessed with the morals and values of the population. They do get a government that in controlling the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court will soon be able to control a woman’s uterus, a human’s non-functioning brain, and the futures and fortunes of those who would have wished to marry within their own sex.
It’s when it comes to their outsides, their actual physical beings, their lives, their health, their future and on the most basic level, their ability to survive, that this government has failed utterly.
The proof is positive that it’s the private sector that can best help during a disaster, which is fortunate because the private sector was the only one that did. When you can organize Hollywood into a disaster relief telethon faster than you can get a sandwich to a starving Southerner, something is very definitely out of whack.
I’ve been reluctant to write about Katrina – the anticipation of Katrina, Katrina as the storm began, Katrina at full fury, Katrina in its aftermath… Katrina and what Katrina has meant to the people and to the President who ignored Katrina, and those Katrina has devastated beyond all normal human comprehension.
After all, so much has been written, so much has been said and virtually all of it – even that which has emerged from sources more accustomed to congratulating the President than vilifying him – has said the same thing: a criminal screw up, a monumental show of indifference and a now clearly defined set of priorities that in lack of action speaks volumes. “You say it best,” goes the song. “when you say nothing at all.”
And nothing is what the President has been saying – even when he speaks.
But from everyone else a tsunami of words – a storm of anger, a hurricane of emotional reaction. The levee (so to speak) has burst.
From The New York Times to FOX News, from the left to the right and everywhere in between, the President and those who advise him have been recognized in a way that even a thousand or so American dead, ten thousand or so Iraqi and Afghani dead, thousands upon thousands of injured, maimed and orphaned humans of all races (hard to tell the nationality of limbs blown off bodies – equality at its most fundamental) devastated and destroyed in a desert region in the name of a war that was mounted on a lie, couldn’t do: the pitiful, careless, unforgivable response to Katrina has framed this Presidency and this President in a way that will remain legend long after the history books that tell the story have long dried up and blown away.
The only good news in sight as the bad news mounts (“It’s going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine” said Home land Security Chief Michael Chertoff, in referring to the now thousands of corpses rescuers expect to find) is that the truth is now out. The indifference, the laziness, the contempt for those who ‘chose to stay’, the non-existent plan of rescue and support – and ware the finger pointing to local agencies: whatever their responsibility, by Monday, they were literally underwater – the unconscionable nerve of two former presidents appealing to the citizenry to financially bail out the rescue effort… all of it reveals a truth long ignored and long in coming.
And even the effort involved in draining the cities, rescuing the living and burying the dead won’t distract Americans from the underlying problem for long; and it isn’t the problem of a city below sea level – it’s the problem of a President beneath contempt.

Date with destiny

If you haven’t seen TV star Jennifer Aniston’s brave little pixie face smiling stoically from the cover of virtually every magazine on your local newsstand save The Economist and Forbes (and that’s only because the financial details of her divorce settlement have yet to be announced) then you are either a shut-in, a coma patient, or seriously, seriously focused on your own life. In which case – good for you!
But even so, even if you are the sort of person who thinks that their own life is ‘important’, or ‘interesting’, or even ‘taking up most of your spare time’, as a Canadian, you’ve likely not missed the potentially more nationally upsetting headlines (which simply repeat and amplify literally dozens of similar headlines over the past 5 years) that Canada is now at heretofore unmatched loggerheads (not your piddling, low-key type loggerheads) with the United States over the most recent ruling – and even more recent disregarding – of the NAFTA ruling on softwood lumber exports.
In a nutshell, though NAFTA arbitrators have decided in Canada’s favour – and not for the first time – in the long standing dispute over exorbitant tariffs imposed by our US counterparts, resulting in a ruling that requires some five billion in unfair taxes be returned, US Trade Representative Bob Portman has announced the United States would ignore it. The ruling. The instruction. The decision. The dough. The end.
Go away.
Canada’s response was swift.
“I beg your pardon?”
Followed by various statements on various levels regarding how our government would argue/fight/punish those who work agin us.
(Best was Senator Pat Carney who got up and walked out of negotiations recently, saying, “What’s to talk about? We won. The Americans won’t abide by the rule of law.” Simple, elegant, Canadian.)
So we have a problem, and the problem isn’t simply softwood; our problem is what the US reaction to the ruling means – has always meant – to our relationship. We can’t ignore it anymore, can’t pretend we haven’t noticed, can’t fool ourselves into thinking it means anything other than what it means. We are not now, nor have we ever been, except in our deepest and sweetest fantasies, of any real importance to the United States.
We are Jennifer Aniston.
Oh sure, we’ve captured America’s attention from time to time, been described as each other’s family, even appeared to be as close as an old married couple. But really and truly, all it’s ever taken for the truth to come out was for us to fairly request something they simply weren’t prepared to give… and the jig was up.
Reading between the lines of the answers the resolutely stiff-(though intermittently trembly)-upper-lipped Aniston shared with Vanity Fair in the much ballyhooed September cover story, a new picture of Brad Pitt is beginning to emerge. A Pitt who contrary to the image he’s portrayed since the Pitt-Aniston marriage went awry, maybe isn’t all that nice. Or honest. Or blameless.
Apparently Aniston, though the opposite was implied, DID want a baby. DID want the marriage. DID want Pitt.
Now that she’s been treated to month after month of lurid stories, impossibly romantic third-world, AIDS fighting orphan baby-adopting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie frolicking, complete with all the long-lensed photos to match (not to mention those purposely shot for Women’s Wear magazine’s 1950’s happy family fantasy – complete with kissing and nekkidness and kiddies and barbecues) Aniston is now launching her own public relations response, casting herself as the “wronged waif who nevertheless is picking herself up and moving on with her life, I-don’t-blame-Brad-but-hey-Billy-Idol-called-he-wants-his-look-back”.
(Geez. If a gal can’t snipe at the man who left her for Angelina Jolie, when on earth is she going to get nasty?)
Likewise, the embarrassingly public decision to brush Canada off has us recalling the UN all over again. In refusing to abide by the NAFTA arbitrator’s ruling, the US in the person of the President invokes deeply painful (not to mention revealing) memories of Bush demanding that the entire United Nations support the move to war against Iraq, and when stymied, simply rolled over the protests and God damn it, went to war anyway.
(And please, let’s not get into John Bolton; salt in the wound, kicking a guy when he’s down… having screaming, growling, animal sex with Angelina within hearing distance of the world’s microphones. Ouch baby.)
But we had some good times, right?
Millions upon millions of tons of lumber-based newsprint captured stories, complete with photos of American Presidents and Canadian Prime Ministers yucking it up, shaking hands, playing golf and having dinner together. Granted, not the sort of dates one imagines Brad Pitt on, yet solid and friendly and indicative of a genuine relationship – much like the snaps of he and Jen at the awards shows over the years.
Could it be all those images were simply for publicity? Staged for the newspapers?
But we tried did we not? Playing hard to get by refusing to join the war on terror, acting as if we really had an option to remain together whilst ardently pursuing our own hopes and dreams – whether it be taking part in peace keeping in Afghanistan or shooting a high profile, low paid indie movie about a bad girl called ‘The Good Girl’? Didn’t the message come through? Were we not bravely and creatively our own country/person?
Did we not win respect, and from that respect, solidify our relationship?
We did not.
We ignored the immutable first rule of high school: it doesn’t matter how cute, how sincere, how girl-next-door Canadian you are, when it comes to power, the captain of the football team will always gravitate back to the head cheerleader.
Jennifer learned this the hard way.
We’ve been learning this lesson for decades – though it must be said, there was no smoking Angelina Jolie to point us to the truth. All we had to alert us to what should have been obvious from the start was a dirty old man named Saddam Hussein and a shadowy bunch of powerful men called ‘American Corporate Interests’.
But before we throw up our collective hands, or press our tear stained faces into our pillows, we should remember a few of things.
1. High school doesn’t last forever; the Presidency has about 3 years to go. Angelina has a way of moving on…
2. Things change. One minute you’re the captain of the football team, the next you’re selling used cars… one minute you’re President of the United States, the next you’re a footnote in a history that finally manages to portray you exactly as you are… one minute you’re the handsomest guy in the world, next you’re wrinkly Robert Redford. (If only you were Paul Newman!)
3. The tide can turn dramatically. From loser geek to billionaire software manufacturer. From President to pariah. From Brad to Bob.
From softwood losses to oil sands gains.
Never forget we’ve got potentially the second richest oil reserves in the world. Not over there - right up here. Never forget we played fair even when you were screwing us. And then when you weren’t. Never forget that respect shouldn’t be limited only to those you feel are equal – which you may mistakenly judge is none.
Because we won’t.

Thank Weisblott

You wouldn’t necessarily suspect how fond I am of Marc Weisblott if you’d seen me whacking him with a rolled up newspaper yesterday afternoon in the Second Cup at Yonge and Heath.
Far from being a bad dog, Marc (the blog bod in Toronto) is a thoroughly good egg; advising, suggesting, encouraging – egging me on – continuing in his self-deprecating, cynical yet hopeful style. It’s a nice combination – like tears through laughter, or warm sunshine on a rainy day. Sometimes it’s the contradictions that underscore the truth of a person’s character.
No, I wasn’t abusing Le Weisblott on purpose, simply fending off a couple of determined yet wily houseflies; a pair I assume had come down off their fabled wall so as to better listen in to our conversation.
In death, as in life, they didn’t miss much.
But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
You see, Marc and I don’t see each other often, our contact being generally through email. In fact, on reflection, I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice on the phone. And now that I think about it, I don’t actually have his phone number, (mystery solved… so this is why his phone voice is such a well kept secret…) nor do I possess his address, beyond web.
(Crazy eh? Marc, for me, literally lives in cyberspace. How modern – how quintessentially millennial!)
We probably got together four or five times last year, and as few as two or three times so far this year. We talk about what we’re doing, enjoy catching up on mutual friends, (enjoy even more catching up on tales of mutual antipathies) and Marc usually surprises me with the scope and nature of his latest idea.
He’s always busy with a number of plans and projects and is, as far as I can gather, also an intensely private person. And though you wouldn’t know it just by looking, that’s a pretty apt description of me as well.
So maybe that’s why we’re drawn together. Rare as the occasion may be…
I’ve blogged about Marc before (‘Blame Weisblott’ November 28, 2004) and credited him with starting me on the blogging path, a path that has been one of the most satisfying of my life.
And all I’ve ever done for him was buy him one of those smoothie-type drinks at the coffee shop and smack him with a rolled up section of the New York Times for his troubles.
(I may also have purchased him the odd bun or brownie at Starbucks, but when you do the math, it doesn’t really add up does it?)
Yesterday for ince, he not only brought me two separate story ideas, bucked me up with his view of my potential: (“There’s the matter of getting your grander schemes in gear… just keep pushing the hook that you’re on top of things in a multi-platform sorta way… yours is a shtick deserving of an audience that goes way beyond the blog folks – not to mention all the people who don’t really know where to start in finding different ideas online…” pure Mozart to my clapped out sensibilities) but also provided me with a coupon so that actually, the smoothie I bought for him (when coupled with my own – a twofer you see) was essentially… well, free.
Free advice, free therapy, free drinks – oh, and did I mention he not only started my blog, but named it, essentially designed it, worked out the bugs, made multiple helpful suggestions and just recently helped me tweak it all over again?
No?
Well, he did.
Free technical support.
Free support.
So I’m just saying, Weisblott, I owe you.
Oh – and the possibly greatest thing about Marc Weisblott?
He won’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

Temperature's rising, polls are falling...

Let’s face it. If you live anywhere near Toronto (or, as in my case, right smack dab in the freaking centre of it) this has been an absolutely appalling summer. Stifling, enervating, oppressive – it must be like being kidnapped and wrapped in a hot, wet, smelly brown blanket before being stuffed in an airless car trunk.
Except for the car trunk (my personal prison has been a non air-conditioned bedroom with only the slow, sluggish movement of an ancient, enfeebled ceiling fan to stir the air at all) I’d say the experience was pretty much the same.
Especially the held against my will part.
The fact that we’ve had a break from the humidity today reminds me of nothing so much as a sunny day in Seattle.
I heard a statistic once (and I’m hoping the mere mention of the extremely official sounding word ‘statistic’ is enough to substitute for actually research) that more people commit suicide on the sunny days than on rainy days in Seattle.
The reason?
Why, a sunny day simply raises once again (if only for a brief shining moment) all the dashed hopes and dreams that life might get better, that it might look different, or change; the suicide knows it won’t – counting the hours until the sky turns overcast and the rain begins to fall – and can hardly bear the odious comparison.
That’s us here in Toronto – a break in the heat, a cool breeze, a chance to breathe without the ever present suffocating brown blanket of air is just a cruel joke: any minute now the barometer will swing back into the groove it’s been relentlessly carving since the end of June and we will once again be suffering the tortures of the damned and returning to – as rumor has it – the Holiday in Hell now predicted to last until at least October.
Vacation you say? A getaway to cooler climes? Ha. Freelancers don’t take vacations – we eke out little snippets of time off between assignments. One project finishes, and as you search for the next you might take a day here and there, sleep in a little later, or skive off to a matinee – my personal favourite – until the next opportunity comes along.
The optimal situation is when a project is all planned and in the works and the time between where you are (or when you are) and it’s beginning is too short to do something else, but just long enough to sneak off to a borrowed cottage, mosey on out to visit the folks, or in the best, best case scenario, hop a plane to a Caribbean or Mediterranean location for some serious funny hat/sunburn salve activity.
For myself it’s been more matinee-mode of late, as nothing doable money-wise has materialized since June and the guilt of leaving even for a four day weekend (no properly work ethic raised gal would dream of rewarding non-rewarded non-work) has kept me chained to the computer, checking Media Job Search Canada, Jeff Gaulin, Mastheadonline and Marketing Mag with the same diligence I once applied to The Superficial, Defamer, Page Six and The Awful Truth. A couple of nibbles, but nothing to chow down on so far – and so it goes.
I sort of think of the President of the United States as the Freelancer in Chief, or better, the First Freelancer; with one or (tops) two, four year contracts for the short-term position of Leader of the Free World – secure once voted in, but limited all the same. And in that spirit, I think all freelancers should offer a respectful salute – a tip of the hat – to one of the most talented skivers our profession has ever seen rise from within the ranks; the man whose inspired gift for punching in late and clocking off early is becoming the stuff of legend.
As Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker reported August 2nd in The Washington Post, Bush has easily surpassed his father (a formerly formidable presidential-holiday-taking opponent) and is just days away (with still a couple of holiday weeks to go, mind,) from leaving current record holder Ronald Reagan in the figurative dust. The (literally dusty… and ashy) Great Communicator’s own vacay stats come in at an astounding 335 days off over a period of 8 years.
By the time Bush slaps those numbers down, he (and we) will still have 3 and a half more years to go on his current project. There’s little doubt he’ll be able to claim at least a full year off amongst his eight. The mind literally reels at the notion of a wartime president so easy and comfortable with ensuring his continued happy and rested sanguinity.
(Jon Stewart pointed out recently in a compare and contrast couple of photos how much better in fact the president looks now than when he actually began. In stark comparison, Clinton had the good taste to become more white-haired, drawn and wrinkly, his stress related red-nosed rosacia at critical mass by the time he left office, and even Reagan allowed a few strands of grey to populate his pumpkin near the end. But Bush looks like nothing so much as the social director on a western-themed Carnival cruise – browned and cheerful and always up for a game of horseshoes, a bike ride or a spot of enthusiastic brush clearing before lunch.
(Hoary though the analogy may be, one cannot help but look forward to what a future White House attic excavation will reveal in the way of Dorian Grey style portraiture of one of its former residents…)
Not that the Chief Executive/First freelancer doesn’t deserve a little r n' r – and not to suggest that many White House duties don’t simply shift to the Crawford Texas ranch location, where the President is regularly briefed and even shows up at occasional ditch-side press conferences, (likely more than he holds when in Washington, the Oval Office just steps away from his own personal Presidential Podium) passing comment on the news of the day, grimacing at the inevitable numbers of American lives lost in Iraq, the ongoing struggle for democracy and so on and so forth. Too busy though with barbecues and fishing trips and cross country mountain biking jaunts with Lance Armstrong to go further down the road to where another ditch-side dweller has been trying for the past 2 weeks to have a personal word with the President about her own dead American; a son killed in the war recently re-christened the ‘Struggle Against Global Extremism’.
(N.B.: no matter the fancy names you tart it up with, you don’t have to be a suicide in Seattle to recognize a truth that doesn’t change.)
Close (geographically) as the President is to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of one of the nation’s distressingly regular military sacrifices, Bush has announced he will not meet with her; that though he “feels her pain”, he also feels he must “get on with his life” – a reply so breathtakingly, obliviously self-serving that one just has to marvel again at the elevated-to-an-art-form brand of remote indifference that has typified so much of his presidency.
The mother though – the mother refuses to pack in her protest, gaining attention, and, as at a recent nationally organized vigil in support of her desire to get answers to questions surrounding the legitimacy of the war into which she delivered her late son, maybe as many as 100,000 adherents to her cause.
Mrs. Sheehan has become the flashpoint for a citizen’s anti-war movement, until now too sloppy and sketchily conceived to provide much of a voice. But now with the support of Moveon.org – the Michael Moore sponsored anti-Bush political action web site – a citizen with a righteous pedigree (born at the soldier’s death of son Casey) has been able to transform a shaky band of protesters into a united group with a legitimate figure to coalesce behind.
Bush the man may be quietly ignoring her presence, but Bush the president has fallen back on some traditional methods, involving some key thugs to send his real message; the conservative ‘Move America Forward’ group is organizing Bush support in the form of a “You Don’t Speak For Me Cindy!” protest scheduled to head out soon from San Francisco, culminating in a drum roll conclusion at a rally out front of the Presidential compound in Crawford.
(Shades of the Swift Boat Veterans who went on the attack against Democratic hopeful and war hero Senator John Kerry with a slick and cynical well-crafted vengeance during the election... )
The President needs support to protect him from a grieving mother?
The fact that a number of mothers of dead soldiers are throwing their weight behind continued support of the war in Iraq conjures a number of sickly sadistic images – just picture the inevitable confrontation in Crawford: placard-carrying mothers of the glorious dead from both sides of the issue attacking each other on the side of the road outside the President’s ranch. Screaming, spitting, breast beating and t-shirt rending?
Stomach churning enough for you?
The President and his advisors may have made a tactical error, underestimating the power of legitimate protest and the disgust many may feel for a strategy designed and executed not to oust a worthy competitor, but to shut up a grief-stricken parent.
‘Move America Forward’ has already begun a whisper campaign, branding Mrs. Sheehan as everything from a lunatic co-opted by the liberals, to a vampire exploiting her son’s death purely for the attention and political points. (‘War Mother’s Syndrome by proxy’?)
Rove may have fatally misfired this time.
Far from being the five week (five! week!) vacation in paradise Bush had planned, the temperature may soon be rising somewhere more reminiscent of a toasty Toronto-style Holiday in Hell.
Could something actually change? Could this creepy miscalculation, when added to the America’s steadily decreasing support for the President and the war finally get through to the man himself?
Could the heat wave finally end?
Hey! I’m starting to feel better already.
Cool.

President Hottie

I don’t understand – I’ve been scanning the newspapers, listening in on talk radio and – yes, okay, but just a little bit – checking out CNN.
As far as I can tell, nobody’s talking about the top story.
My girlfriend called yesterday morning at precisely 8:01 am.
I was already sitting by the phone and wondering whether it would be appropriate to call before 8:15 (our usual approximate time of early morning contact) or whether I should just watch the moments tick by.
She may have preempted the call, but I got the first words in.
“Did you see him last night?” I enquired breathlessly. “Oh. My. God!” (Let me assure you I don’t normally speak like a stereotypical, vocab-challenged Valley Girl, but the events of the previous evening were still fresh and practically ringing (no – singing!) in my ears. I haven’t been this excited since Sephora opened at the Toronto Eaton Center – or even since my gorgeous ex came up from
New York to take me to a birthday dinner. Mrrrowww!.)
“I know,” she replied quietly. “I’ve been thinking of you. I know how much this means to you.”
We both let a moment of silence pass; the impact of Wednesday night’s announcement heralded an unspoken agreement to reflect the gravitas of the situation with a respectful quiet.
But how long could we keep our emotions in check?
“YaHOOOOOO!” she shrieked.
“WaHOOOOO!” I joined in. “Joe Biden for President? Tell me I’m not dreaming!”
It’s true. Wednesday night, Senator Joseph Biden, (D. Delaware and totally fab) announced his intention to run for President in 2008. He made his announcement (as I believe we can now expect all future important Democrat-type announcements to be made) on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Not the first – that would be John Edwards last year, the inaugural announcement maker – but as far as I’m concerned, the best, and for all I care, the last.
Joe Biden. A glamour boy intellectual: the most influential, experienced and respected voice of centrist reason in the Senate. Not to mention a total babe.
And then it got ever-so-slightly better: Biden suggested he’d be interested in sharing a ticket featuring Senator John McCain (R. Arizona – and like, totally heroic) creating the first viable non-partisan ticket in memory.
I was practically salivating. Okay, I was drooling. A little. This has been my dream ticket since last year’s ‘coma couple’ Kerry and Edwards had their asses (and essentially ours) handed to them in the 2004 election.
My friend was acting pretty het up too. If you’d told either of us a couple of years ago that we’d be giggling and sighing and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the possibilities concerning the future of two (relatively) old white guys, we’d have laughed in your face, and drooled not a drop. Not that we haven’t been deeply interested and vocal over the doings down south - but times have changed
and we along with them.
The events of the past five years have demonstrated in a way the history books will be unlikely to fully capture, the frightening (not to mention bitterly divided) state of the union. Not only have we experienced war and terrorism and hate and prejudice and constitutional issues concerning the overriding of amendments II, IIII, VI and VIII, (and possibly X and XIV as well) in addition to the thoroughly disquieting attempts by the President and his closest cronies to more fully link the church with the State, but we’ve witnessed the soft and hard abuses of power of Presidential power as well. The most recent abuse the completely legal - though ethically indefensible - Recess Appointment by the President of John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN.
The breathtaking contempt with which the President clearly views the UN, the rest of the world and in effect his own Senate, by appointing this nightmare of negativism would be bad enough, but he compounds his disdain by misstating both the reasons for waiting until the Recess and the purpose of the requests for further information the Democrats put forth. What the President was implying in refusing to supply the requested documentation was that they (the Democrats) didn’t
really want it - they were just persecuting a defenseless Bolton and employing unnecessary delaying tactics – and that anyway, the documents were far too sensitive to be seen by committee members.
Committee members, Biden was quick to remind the Daily Show audience, whose experience of the information in question, was likely far superior to that of Bush and his nominee.
(From Biden’s bio on http://biden.senate.gov/...
“For three decades, Joe Biden has played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. He has become respected at home and abroad for his well-informed, common-sense approach to International relations. Since 1997, Biden has served as either Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he has worked on a bipartisan basis with the top Republican members. Senator Richard Lugar, who currently chairs the committee, said: "Senator Biden has a very strong commitment to a bipartisan foreign policy and serves as a good example for everyone in Congress. He has a very broad, comprehensive view of the world. He’s a good listener, but he’s also a strong and effective advocate of his position."
As Biden said the other night on Jon, the information they were asking for concerned vital details of Bolton’s communications around issues of arms proliferation - specifically WMD ‘proof’ he passed on despite vocal disagreement from experts who seriously questioned its veracity - communications whose positive nature may have played an important role in the rush to war.)
Biden’s been in government since he was 29; coming up on his 63rd birthday, the lawyer from Delaware is the fifth youngest person ever to hold Senate office. His experience and the esteem with which he is held probably explains his appointments to the (amongst others) Senate Steering and Coordination Committee, as Co-Chair of the NATO Observer Group, the Senate National Security Working Group, as Vice-Chair of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and as Member of the Congressional Air Force Caucus, the National Guard Caucus, the Congressional Port Security Caucus, and the Senate Biotechnology Caucus. He’s also the Co-Chair of the International Anti-Piracy Caucus – just one more example of Biden’s dedication to protecting Americans on land, in air and even on the high seas. Yo ho ho!
What I’m saying - and could it be any more obvious – is that the potential now exists for America to be led by an experienced, articulate, intelligent, funny, subtle, insightful, GORGEOUS leader. A guy unafraid of the possibilities of a non-partisan co-leadership, taking a strong and informed stand on the realities of war, the profound importance of education, health care, the environment, crime, punishment and looking gooooooood!
He intends to begin the process in the short term by traveling around, gauging possible interest and raising political money. For the long term, it will be an all out campaign to tempt McCain away from the dark side. A little experience of piracy may well come in handy…
Get excited. I see a change a coming – and it not only eases my fears, it’s easy on the eyes.

We shoot, they score

You might have missed the initial story that a possible permanent peace was breaking out in Ireland, after all, on the cover of my daily newspaper on July 29th, the top story, giant central photo and biggest headline were busy bemoaning the rather abrupt departure of Hockey Players’ Association boss, Bob Goodenow.
I somehow managed to contain my empathetic grief long enough to glance at the sideline story which caught my eye with a smaller headline: “IRA gives up armed struggle”.
Heaven knows how the laying down of weapons after 36 years of deadly insurgency in Northern Ireland (not to mention the pain and death inflicted by some of Ireland’s angriest sons abroad) could compete with “A legacy of being unappreciated” (the story detailing the deep disappointment felt by the ousted negotiator, one of a number of obscenely rich men tussling night and day over the fortunes of a number of other obscenely rich men, who in turn make their money mostly by literally tussling… on ice) but bless Ireland, plucky little headline maker, it did catch my attention and the story, though possibly long anticipated and less surprising than the departure of Goodenow, may be just the teensiest bit more significant.
Though the language surrounding the statement made by Sinn Fein has been (and continues to be) parsed to eke out the most straightforward nuggets (does this mean that the war is over? is it the end of the Irish Republican Army itself?) and there is some argument over these not exactly trifling details, that the leadership has “formally ordered an end to the armed campaign” that the individual units have been ordered to dump arms and work through “exclusively peaceful means” seems reason enough to rejoice. How about that? A war has ended. Peacefully. Geez.
But it shouldn’t be so surprising; after all, Ireland has been pulling a fairly substantial number of positive stories out of its bright green leprechaun’s hat lo’ these many years.
With an economy that falls second only to Luxembourg of all European Union signatories (remind me to check out just what it is Luxembourg does that is so seriously profitable), a group that includes lesser lights such as Britain, Germany and France, Ireland is experiencing not a renaissance, but a re-birth – a re-birth that through the most diligent of prenatal preparation and postnatal care, bears all the hallmarks of a nation united in explosive growth and prosperity for years to come.
And what did they do? Why, they did all the things your father ever insisted upon: they examined their situation ruthlessly and honestly, made decisions that were difficult or unpopular in the short term, stuck by their plan and continued (and continue) to innovate and build upon those successes.
More than that, and really at the core, they did it with the support and inclusion of the population, whose substantial personal gains are the engines that drive the ongoing ascension of the nation’s collective fortunes.
It didn’t happen overnight. After the second world war when the rest of the western world was gearing up for postwar prosperity, Ireland continued to molder in the past, retaining protectionist barriers and presiding over a national balance sheet that reflected an unhealthy balance of agricultural exports – a full 30% in 1960, mostly animals – against manufactured exports that topped out at a pathetic 19% of the GDP.
The plan (or more accurately, the non-plan) could only hinder growth, add to inefficiencies and pretty much cement swinging 60’s Ireland into a bog of poverty, debt and few – if any – future prospects.
(Interestingly, farm income now exceeds non-farm income as farmers and their families have moved into part-time farming, adding to their income from professional positions in big cities and small towns alike. There’s an attractive balance there that both pleases with it’s practicality while it maintains a beautiful small Irish countryside – another reason why tourism continues as a growth industry.)
By 1970, Ireland had entered the European Union, and with it began to formulate a long term plan to boost its economy as well as the prospects of its people.
Huge changes were made in a government that supported many rather parochial branches; the poorly run telecommunications sector was ruthlessly snatched from the jealous, fumbling fingers of the outdated bureaucracy and with the assistance of EU investment, replaced with a system that to this day has made it the call centre of choice for multinationals at the top of their respective games.
(Apparently two major airlines that don’t even fly into Ireland have relocated their marketing and reservations centres to Ireland, as have many international medical insurance companies and financial institutions headquartered their document processing operations there.
Note also: nine out of ten top international pharmaceutical companies, sixteen out of twenty medical device manufacturers and seven out of ten software designers are all benefiting the world’s current ‘Economic Tiger’.)
And virtually all of the fixes were far from quick: inefficient public concerns – national air, rail and sea carriers – were absorbing significant proportions of the public investment, while local infrastructure suffered. It may have taken until the mid-eighties to achieve dominion over the budgets, but finally the government broke the airline monopolies with the result that prices fell, tourism increased and another employment sector was beefed up.
But the two biggies – the ones without which any of the supplementary decisions made, no matter how innovative, might have ended up failures – was the decision to fundamentally alter the industrial relations climate by choosing to support employer, union and government equally, opening the door to trust-inducing labour negotiations, wage moderation through agreed upon business tax cuts, whilst committing to ensuring social welfare payments would remain untouched.
You could say ‘Voila!’ right now and consider the government had done its job pretty darn well – but there was more: Ireland further committed to making a college education virtually free and available to all Irish citizens.
An educated citizenry complete with established social partnerships that promote competitiveness and improvement via the promise of further tax cuts through economies of scale and ongoing progress.
Success begets success.
Foreign Direct Investment – a concept many industrialized nations including our own consider with suspicion and often ill-concealed mistrust – is the backbone of country whose citizens benefit enormously from the resulting general economic stability. Multinationals continue to invest because the market created has focused on three important factors: 1. An English speaking population (most of the world’s big business is still conducted in English); 2. ‘First movers’ status (early adoption of key concepts); and 3. Low taxes and a stable rate of corporate profits.
Perhaps Ireland is supported by so many other nations and international corporations because Ireland so fiercely and so committedly supports itself.
It’s interesting isn’t it, that as the west concerns itself with ways and means of getting around poorly negotiated free trade agreements, the cost of education skyrockets out of the reach of all but the wealthiest, and our attention is constantly being diverted by a pointless, cruel and bloody war (and we’re learning nothing of its root causes nor how to deal with them) one small country, once known more for potato famines, internecine religious war, grinding poverty and periods of mass emigration, has transformed itself into a high tech marvel of across-the-board prosperity and international goodwill. And with Northern Ireland potentially leaving behind its ‘Troubles’, further expansion seems the next logical step.
But as you’d imagine, they can’t do everything with the same committed, focused will of the west; while they’ve been messing about, beavering away at ensuring economic and social freedoms, educating their citizens and securing multi-billion dollar international contracts, it seems they haven’t spent much time securing a decent national hockey team.
So we’ve got that going for us.

Follow the God

Scared yet? Gibbering in mind-blowing fear? Shaking like hairless Chihuahua in an icy draught?
You’re not? Shame on you – you’re part of the problem.
The most important issue today, and as usual the liberals (small and large ‘L’) the libertarians, the left-leaning and the laissez-faire are out to lunch.
Not that I’ve got anything against lunch – why, I love lunch! Love to take a couple of hours to lounge at an outdoor café, sipping mineral water, indulging in moules and frites, gossiping with a girlfriend, watching all the boys strut by, closing my eyes and tipping my face into the sunshine, a self-satisfied smile playing across my dreaming features, the hustle and flow of the workaday world simply white noise punctuated by the clink and chatter of ice cubes in my gently perspiring glass… wait – what, hold on; the bill?
As ever there’s a price to be paid – a tab to be tallied – and this reckoning bears all the hallmarks of an earth shattering score to be settled.
Aesop didn’t miss much in his fables, and the one with which our current and future situation bears the closest resemblance is ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’.
You know the story: the grasshopper sings and plays all day (and no doubt orders the salad instead of the frites at the insect outdoor café) whilst the industrious little ant labours all summer long, collecting food and necessities for the inevitable long cold winter ahead. Fast forward to the inevitable long, cold winter, and the grasshopper is starving and shivering, the ant, cozy and well fed. The moral: prepare like a Republican, or shiver on the outside like a defeated (and demoralized) Democrat.
The pundits were all over that analogy during the last election, reminding listeners and viewers and readers alike that while the Democrats may make a fine showing in the moment, the end result is inevitably undermined by foundations long laid by Republicans who labour and till and toil even in the off season, never resting on their laurels, never relaxing for a lazy lunch, keeping their eye firmly on the ball that has long been bouncing in their home court.
The result: the President can seemingly do no wrong. He can threaten social security, stack the Supreme Court deck with right wing cards – he can have his war and eat it too. And with the exception of a few lackluster polls, he can go on doing so merrily, merrily – his only recent misstep the nomination of a world-class jerk as U.N. Ambassador, a misstep he corrected nicely by making his Supreme Court nom a scandal-free, upright, uptight, bandbox clean and shiny keeper of the Republican faith, John Roberts.
It’s that crafty legerdemain again – distract them with the whitest white guy ever born and back him up with a bookend perfect wife and two precocious and porcelain blonde tots and your audience will never notice the petition to overturn Roe V. Wade secreted up your sleeve, or the motion being brought to limit marriage to a man and a woman concealed behind your squirting flower boutonnière.
But once again even the distraction isn’t the distraction we should be watching; as Frank Rich wrote in his New York Times column last week, even the Judith Miller/Karl Rove contretemps wasn’t really about the principals in the story. The real story, the story behind the story, is the story of the Iraq war and how dishonestly it was set about and achieved. “Follow the uranium,” he wrote, in a tip of the hat to Watergate’s Deep Throat, who advised The Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein to ignore the machinations and monkey business of Nixon and his minions, and instead “follow the money” to get at the truth.
Back to the future (or at least to the present) and we make a mistake by focusing on the Supreme Court to the detriment of the underlying disease of which John Roberts (and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and their ilk) are simply the unpleasant and noxious symptoms. Symptoms of the rot that has set in at the top; and by the top, I refer not to the President, but to the fundamentalist leaders of the Religious Right whose presence is only beginning to be felt even as they feel their own powerful oats, flexing their increasingly powerful political muscles.
The President they bought and elected and whose core constituency they control with a will of unforgiving, unbending iron is already subservient to their central cause: to firmly entrench God at the top of the nominal democracy that is swiftly shifting to a near-theocracy – a theocracy that proclaims Jesus the main man and the bible as the Bill of Rights, making the Ten Commandments the basis of a Constitution for a nation that seems to have been lounging like a grasshopper at a sidewalk café, paying only scant attention as the first signs of snow herald the coming blizzard.
It’s a cold world they’re planning alright – a world that only begins with a Supreme Court that will reflect their agenda for years, even decades to come.
With a smoothness and an oiliness that has enabled them to slither through some tight spaces previously thought impenetrable, church and state, far from remaining separate are on a collision course – a rock and a hard place that when they smash together will simultaneously smash the principles and the people who have long been labouring to hold at arm’s length the delicate balance of morality and law that hold fairness and equality at their core.
Whoops.
But the onion has at least one more layer I believe, the layer that conceals what is behind the Religious Right, and this is the bitterest concealment of all; for even as we may disagree with the spiritual beliefs of one another, even as we attempt to balance the wide array of faiths that form the foundation for the private values and consciences of many, we trust and believe that we all mean well; we have to - it’s called respect. And it's necessary to a peaceful coexistence.
Not necessary though for those who choose to co-exist with none – the 'my way or the highway' folks who identify themselves as Christians and openly advocate the murder of abortion doctors, the punishment of stem cell scientists (cannibals they call them) and the segregation of gay and lesbian citizens, as well as a list of places, institutions and positions they should be compelled by law to relinquish: teaching, parenting, ministering and administering. This is who these people are and these are the issues they hold dear, and the basis of their belief appears to be hatred, bigotry and punishment.
What I’m saying is (and I don’t refer to any Deity I’ve ever imagined, the one Whose hands-off mission of free will – I pray – is at the centre a message of love) keep an eye and an ear on folks at the top; listen in particular for words and clues and phrases that imply a union with the Almighty, statements that suggest an insider knowledge and an ability to interpret the intentions and wishes of Himself.
Watch for pronouncements that cede the rights of the individual to the power of the state, and further, to the state-sponsored interpretation of the cruelest and bloodiest parts of the Bible.
“Follow the God” is what I’m saying.
And when you hear His name evoked by a politician, be afraid.
And listen even harder.

Welcome to Washington

Judy Miller of the New York Times is now marking week two of her incarceration for the crime of not revealing her sources for a story that was never published.
Though the putative article remains unread (and as far as we know, unwritten) it’s certain that the story would have focused on the leak of information that ended in the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Word is that the leak was payback on Plame’s husband Joe Wilson, who himself published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times two years ago refuting the State of the Union claims made by the Bush administration on the proliferation of WMD as justification for the war on Iraq, and specifically that yellowcake uranium was being mass produced in Niger for delivery to a certain sadistic dictator.
The White House was a little disappointed with Wilson’s point of view and, so the story goes, Rove spread the word that Wilson’s credibility was questionable, as evinced by the fact that it was his wife whose connections in the CIA got him the job; clearly a liar and a bum unable to find employment with out the assistance of his widdle wifey. A twofer, maybe even a threefer! 1. Wife outed, 2. Wilson’s suspect loyalties, and 3. Pussy whipped!
Judy wasn’t the only one with the story. As anybody who has taken even the most cursory notice of the news in the last few weeks is aware, at least two other reporters were favoured with the insider information – TIME Magazine’s Matt Cooper who narrowly escaped jail time himself and was saved at the last minute by the machinations of his corporate bosses TIME Warner Inc (with whose actions in supplying his emails and notes to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald Cooper contends he disagreed – he honestly thought he was going to jail) and indeed by the putative leak himself – Bush senior advisor, the Machiavellian (he was the source for the whisper attack on 2000 Republican Presidential candidate John McCain – “Is he stable? Is his wife on drugs?” and Swift Boat Veterans victim John Kerry “A war hero – oh really?”, not to mention back in the day his attack on Bush opponent for Governor, the incumbent Ann Richards “lesbo?”) administration ‘Architect’ Karl (Trash Mouth) Rove – who freed Cooper from all ‘Double Super Secret Background’ promises. And Robert Novak, right wing commentator and Bush pet poodle who was actually the one who broke the story naming Plame in his column, and interestingly wasn’t at any time in any danger of arrest for his principles – if he indeed has any.
Rove’s current strategy is to suggest he never at any time actually, positively, literally, in so many words named the CIA operative, a claim that is parsed out from the fact that he only ever identified her as ‘Wilson’s wife’. A Herculean mental leap one assumes, and impossible for the average reporter to suss out.
Hey, is it his fault if even Novak is smart enough to pick up the Washington telephone directory?
And as the story wends its way across the weeks, months and years (all the action took place more than two years ago) pundits from all sides of the argument continue to join in the fracas.
Today on CNN's Sunday talk show ‘Reliable Sources’, Matt Cooper gave his first official interview and a handful of journalists along with Watergate eminence grise Bob Woodward weighed in with points of view that ran the gamut from “Rove is the devil” to “Wilson had it coming” to “She (Valerie Plame) was never in any danger and wasn’t even equal to the designation that would make identifying her a federal crime, so what’s the big deal?”
The deal feels very real indeed – and the implications, regardless of the finer points (was Plame in her position technically protected by the law?) indicate that the freeze may well descend on journalists who have the understandable desire to stay outside of lockdown in order to pursue their careers, maintaining their bill-paying abilities and who may have to abandon all stories requiring deep background source secrecy as the precedent set will make it impossible for reporters to guarantee anonymity. Even a reporter who might promise personal trustworthiness, hand on heart like Cooper, could be undercut by their corporate bosses. What's a source to do?
Interestingly, there was argument – even from some journalists themselves – that the source (Rove) was undeserving of protection, unlike Deep Throat say, who was informing on a dishonest and dangerous President and administration, as compared to Rove, whose actions were taken to back up his President by sly discrediting of former public servant and whistleblower Wilson.
Seems to me that as distasteful as it might be, your slimy sources need just as much protection as your saints. Information is information, and whether we like it or not, or suspect the source has questionable motives, what’s sauce for the goose etc. What other rationale can there be? All are protected or none are.
Woodward was just the teensiest bit superior in his segments, questioning the size and scope of the contretemps and deciding it didn’t meet the standard of high crime, again for Plame’s technical potential as an outed operative (though she did work for the CIA, her identity was a secret and her area of operation the search for WMD) and the issue’s non-resemblance to Watergate...
He did make one helpful comment – he said that the worst mistake that had been made throughout the exercise was that the reporters didn’t then (and haven’t now) unearthed the entire story – a story that should be told all in a piece, facts checked, conclusion inescapable. Of course the media now are in the uncomfortable position of not having access to all the elements of the story, still under investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
And this morning’s Toronto Sunday Star wasn’t particularly helpful in providing insight. In the weekly Sunday Op-Ed ‘Point/Counterpoint’ between lefty Linda McQuaig and right-wing-nut-job Rondi Adamson, both their sparring arguments were sloppy, their justifications emotional and partisan, the discussion not pushed forward one whit.
(Normally I would side with McQuaig, but her contention that Rove should be fired because he’s clearly a Creepy Creeperson left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed, while Adamson’s “we should wait until all the information is in” whilst simultaneously taking cheap shots at Wilson – hers is the first piece of punditry I’ve read that suggests that Wilson cooked the books and there was in fact enough yellowcake to snuff out birthday candles the world over – achieves the double play of acting the wide-eyed innocent while taking care to blame the victim. Guess there’s only one side that deserves to wait for facts instead of braying out all sorts of unfounded, unproven allegations…)
And in the middle of it all are the President and Rove – best friend status unassailable, smiling and handshaking/backpatting, boarding Airforce One as one, opticals in place, sharing deep secrets and strategies, while Judy Miller molders away in some Washington snake pit, all concerns of first amendment rights, double standard judging and plain common sense as solid and stable as early morning fog. Poof! – it’s gone.
And I still don’t know how he does it – Bush, I mean. From the war in Iraq, to alleged (and in many cases, proven) torture of prisoners by American operatives, to this most recent do-si-do with the truth (everyone today is recalling – with an almost nostalgic fondness – the Clinton “It all depends what ‘is’ is” argument) I just don’t know how he gets away with it.
The Pope who worries about the moral dangers posed by fictional wizard Harry Potter should spare a prayer for a country whose real live magician can take it to war, kill it’s beloved sons and daughters, change the rules halfway through, never admit to making a mistake, STILL blame the entire mess on 9/11 and without saying it in so many words, clearly indicate that only an idiot doesn’t know that the ends justify the means. Some people might call it misdirection or sleight of hand, but there’s no doubt the result is a certain kind of sinister black magic.
Bob Woodward said something else – he said he was concerned not so much about the silence the indictment of reporters for refusing to reveal sources might achieve so much as the casual deep background bullshit that might be lost from the picture. He suggests that reporters can only really get the full flavour of a story when government officials and those others in the know, can casually and without any personal responsibility for the facts, mark the ticket of someone they themselves want to silence by whisper rather than shout; that it’s the whole picture – the gossip good, bad and completely imaginary – that helps journalists paint a picture, build a relationship with sources and basically paste together some sort of a story.
The interviewer was clearly nonplussed as to what this might mean to the guys (and gals) that get caught in the crossfire.
Woodward smiled cynically: “Welcome to Washington,” he said.