Thank God for Matthew LaClair

There’s small life, and there’s big life. Or there’s simple life and intelligent life and somehow we all evolved from simpler life forms and got to the complex life forms—that’s the assumption, that may be your hypothesis. Anybody ever observe it?

This explanation of a basic scientific principle, delivered in a sneering tone, was given in a New Jersey High School. So what, you ask. Kids say a lot of stupid things; that's why they're in high school in the first place, to learn stuff, and to improve their minds. Doubtless the teacher stepped in and set the poor kid straight.

One would think, wouldn't one?

The trouble is, the oyster responsible for this particular pearl was the teacher. Yes, believe it or not, a twenty-first century educator actually said this, as part of a confused explanation of why he thought the big bang, the fossil record of the development of life, and the account of billions of years of pre-history clearly visible in the night sky, are all not science. As he babbled on this teacher cruelly revealed his utter lack of understanding of the basics of science, of the discipline of historical research, and of simple forensics.

The funny thing is that this guy has his defenders. One of them wrote:

I've had this teacher and he is one of the best teachers. He taught history the way it was and in group discussions he would view both points without no religion remarks. So who ever reads this, don't be ignorants and know the facts first.

Given the imbecilic tone and lack of logic to this screed I'm afraid the writer may well be correct, and this ignorant yahoo (I speak of him as I heard him in the recording) may well be "one of the best teachers" in New Jersey. God help the students there if that is true.

Another writes:

i know this teacher personally and know he is a good person and diddnt mean to offend ne one... and fuck the little bitch ass who recorded this shiit... im a senior @ khs and this just adds to all the fucking drama in this school.. so u know wat fuck all u bitch asses who want to see action taken...

It's teachers like this guy--his name is David Paszkiewicz by the way--telling kids nonsense about the scientific record and babbling incoherently about the bible, who are destroying the public school system. I've had my own David Paszkiewiczes in my educational life. There was one Barbara Allen, my fifth grade teacher, who believed that electricity was some awesome and mysterious gift from god, and who taught that it was immoral for people to sit in such a way that any part of the body touched another part. (In later years when I read Tertullian for the first time, I was instantly reminded of poor demented Mrs. Allen.) There was a lady named Hughes who taught Spanish and was obsessed with the notion that her students were making out behind her back. There was a guy named Bertram something or other who thought the best way to teach high school seniors about "Contemporary World Problems" was to have them endlessly color maps. (Even some of the other teachers spoke derogatorily of that particular crochet. In our hearing, even.)

But none of my teachers had the distinction of sounding crazier than Mr. Garrison (except Mrs. Allen sometimes). This guy manages it:

...the public school shouldn’t teach a religion, but the scriptures aren’t religion. ... The scriptures are at the foundation of the world’s religions—of the world’s main religions. Religion is a set way of doing things.

This comes about ten minutes into the available recording of Mr. Garrison's American History class. This is breathtaking. The Christian holy book is not religious--it is the foundation of the world's main religions. What are they? Mr. Paszkiewicz names four of them--Roman Catholicism, Methodism, Presbyterianism, and, uh, Baptism, I guess. The Baptists. At this point we begin to gather that this character has his own private definition of religion, and that it apparently excludes Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a host of other faiths.

"We should be able to bring the bible into the classroom [and] read it," Mr. Garrison-Paszkiewisz says, the remainder of the comment being drowned out on the recording. One of his supporters adds that he said something like "Schools used to be able to open the Bible and read it as if it were a history book." (And congratulations to Joelle Perry for using the subjunctive correctly.) "As if it were a history book." Exactly. But the bible is not a history book (though it is a collection of works from which history may be derived), and should not be read as one. Does Paszkiewisz have his own definition of history as well? It's hard to say, but it should be kept in mind that this oddball is supposed to be teaching American History.

The kids in the classroom are obviously startled by the novel declaration that the bible is not a religious anthology, and the question is asked, what if a student doesn't believe in the bible. The response:

That’s their prerogative. What if the student doesn’t believe in evolution? What if the student doesn’t believe in some other aspect of the educational curriculum?

Now, up to this point Paszkiewisz has been guilty of nothing more than abysmal ignorance. At this point he veers off into preaching over teaching. With no information (apparently) whatsoever he begins to preach to the class his own religious views. This is not an "intellectual debate" as one of his former students describes--to be an intellectual debate there would have to be intellect, and all importantly, information involved. Paszkiewisz proclaims his religious views, clearly, and shows his absolute ignorance of the scientific questions involved.

Note, please, that this is not an opinion. This is an observation, based directly on the teacher's recorded comments. Paszkiewisz introduced the topic of evolution himself, without any prompting, and then went off on a strange religious tirade.

The argument goes something like this: “You’re a believer. Your argument is based on faith, but I believe in evolution; my ideas are based on ["facts?" suggests a student] science, or facts, right?

This is said in the sneering tone the teacher apparently affects any time he is talking about some point with which he disagrees. (At least he does so in this recording.) He goes on to lay out a familiar fundamentalist argument to the effect that scientific concepts are based on faith while belief in the Biblical accounts of creation is soundly based on fulfilled prophecy. He doesn't deal with the more disturbing question of why the grand creator should have written one vast and superfluous lie in the skies, and another consistent one in the layers of rock on the surface of the earth, but allowed the truth to be revealed only in one collection of ancient literature. "If there’s nothing, it can’t explode," he says at one point, referring to the big bang. Of course nobody ever said that nothing (or maybe nothingness) exploded; that's some notion that Paszkiewisz cooked up in his own brain. Nor do scientists describe life as coming about by spontaneous generation (actually an old folk belief long since discarded by science) as he seems to think. Nor are paleontology, archaeology, astronomy, and the like--sciences that peer into the past--somehow not scientific, as he seems to think, because they do not depend heavily on laboratory experiments. This is a notion that the Creation Research Institute (a fundamentalist outfit) used to push, and may still push for all I know, but it's a crazy idea that misunderstands both the nature of the scientific method and the way the sciences in question actually work. None of this is science, history, or philosophy, and all of it is religious discourse. None of it, in this context at least, has any place in a public high school.

A student, Matthew LaClair, complained about this little sermonette, and requested that the teacher apologize and correct his numerous scientific misstatements. After a suitable delay Matthew LaClair was allowed to present his complaint with the teacher present. Paszkiewisz denied everything, claiming that remarks he made had been fabricated or taken out of context. And--

Well you know the rest, right. So many times have I heard this same story, where it always comes down to the teacher's word vs. the student's, and you-know-who wins that contest. Friends, relatives, and total strangers have told me the old familiar story--yes, I admit to being a batshit insane fundamentalist, but I didn't bring my crazy religious notions to class. It's all an invention. One person I know had a teacher who during an anatomy presentation went nuts over the suggestion that some human bones were similar to the equivilent bones in animals--it seems that human beings were a special creation or something and their bones had nothing to do with the bones of animals. And every time the teacher is reinstated with a pat on the head and a "go forth and continue as you have been" from the powers that be. As a victim myself of intellectually perverse teachers I am enraged every time one of these cases comes to my attention. It makes me even angrier when I see the "teacher" in question claiming to be a victim in some fundamentalist rag. It's wretched--enough to make any thinking person retch anyway.

And that's why I say thank god for Matthew LaClair. For once the story didn't have the familiar ending. When Paszkiewisz denied the charges, his student produced the recordings of his little sermon on disk. Paszkiewisz responded (it is said) like an old-time movie villain caught in the act:

You got the big fish ... you got the big Christian guy who is a teacher...!"

Nailed, and he knew it. And yet one of his defenders finds it in his or heart to absolve him:

I know that if he denied some things he said, it was by accident, and not intentional. Its not his fault that he didn't record the discussion and listen to it over and over. That would be the only way he would remember such remarks.

What an indictment. Does the writer mean that Paszkiewisz launches into religious tirades so often that he could hardly be expected to remember the content of one in particular? Or that he's generally forgetful? Or what? Personally I find it impossible to believe that an adult man (he claims to be thirty-eight) could forget flagrantly crossing the line between teaching and preaching in public school. And if he did, well, shame on him.

If a man charged with hitting a pedestrian while out driving two weeks before denies doing it, what do we conclude? We conclude that he's either innocent, or lying. If we subsequently determine that he was not innocent, are we not entitled to assume that he was lying? No, says this defender--he might have forgotten it. But why would somebody forget something like that? Well, he didn't have a video of the event--how could he be expected to remember every little detail of his life without one?

Because of the magnitude of the event. For a man to forget hitting a pedestrian we have to assume either (1) he hits pedestrians so often that one incident could easily be forgotten in the crush of events, or (2) hitting a pedestrian is no big thing with him. Either way, he's a menace.

I suppose there's a third possibility--he could have been blind drunk.

But the fact is, once Paszkiewisz found out that he had been recorded, he acted like a man who knew he was in manure up to his waist. He demanded a union representative and shut up. And high time, too.

For a fuller look at the case, and for all necessary links, check out The Lippard Blog.

Territorial Maps

I'm crouching here over somebody else's laptop at somebody else's house enjoying the festivities associated with my nephew's wedding. For some reason the old bromide to the effect that the map is not the territory springs to mind, so I guess that's the topic of today's blast. Or maybe not--it looks like things are winding up here, so whatever I have to say is absolutely irrelevant. Or not. Help, you goddamn gods, help is all, to quote--well, never mind.

Quiet Reflection

Today, for anybody who's interested, I uploaded another page to my Elizabethan Drama site. This is just a list of plays, of Massinger's plays to be precise, and in no other way remarkable. Except that this list, folks, this list comes alive. Tap the name of the play, ladies and gentlemen, and a copy of that play appears in front of you as if by magic. And this copy is no ordinary copy, no sir, this copy has been brought to you from some great repository of books that may be half a world away. Now this is the future I kind of always expected--except that, to be honest, I didn't expect to live long enough to see it--or at least to see it start, which is where we're at now. At one point I thought this was going to turn into something, but somehow the idea never caught.

Fates of living men inform us
We can fake our years of grime;
And above endure enormous
Flashbacks to a life of crime.

ABC's Road to 9/11

First, I have to confess that I didn't watch all of ABC's Road to 9/11, but I did sit it out for at least two hours, finally abandoning it for the latest episode of the Venture Brothers. I'd already been warned that this was a work of fiction, and that any resemblance to any actual persons or events was strictly coincidental, so I wasn't particularly surprised by the numerous departures from the historical record. I watched it purely as entertainment, as ABC itself suggested, and the long and the short of it is--

It sucked.

The opening hour was too damn long. The sequence of events was not explained, and the constant use of short clips from an unsteady handheld camera focusing too close to see anything was at best irritating, and at worst just plain monotonous. I could have done altogether without the character of "Patricia" (who as far as I know has no historical counterpart); she seemed to have no function whatsoever.

The movie wanders aimlessly around the first attack on the World Trade Center back in 1793 or so and gradually gets to various operations taken to capture the criminals and to identify their financial backer. There's maybe a half-hour's worth of substance in the two plus hours I saw, and decent editing (not the hack-and-slash job I actually saw) might have saved it. Maybe nothing could have saved it. I don't know.

As history, it's ludicrous. As entertainment it's--well, not. Entertaining, I mean.

My advice: forget it. I intend to. Skip tomorrow's installment and maybe read a good book. I hear that The Cell is a real page-turner. You might even learn something.

Journal Entry

My cat Flame just died. Or maybe not; as I look at him he seems to be breathing shallowly, but when I look again—not. It’s just some trick of the light. I went into the bathroom to take my bath a bit before three and he was lying on the floor, very still. I thought he was dead for a moment, but he spoke, his usual querulous meow. He spoke several times, complaining loudly when I lifted him from the floor onto a folded towel that I thought might be more comfortable for him, and I think he appreciated it, as he settled down a little and spoke more quietly. I petted him and told him to relax, that this was a natural transition, the next step on a journey that I could not accompany him on, but that I was here to see him off as best I could. Not that it mattered what I said to him, except perhaps to myself; he may have liked hearing my voice, though—he meowed a couple of times as I ran my bath and got in it as if to check on whether I was still there. After my bath I cleared off a cushion here in the music slash computer room upstairs, and I went back to the bathroom and picked him up gently, his towel still under him. I think he was still alive when I picked him up—I thought I saw him breathing—but when I set him down on the cushion I no longer saw any sign of life. I think he literally died in my arms.

The Voices In My Head

My eyes are swollen and red and have been for the past several days--allergies I suppose, but it's difficult to focus on the screen. I've written nothing for the past several days, not that it matters I suppose, but it feels frustrating. Today I got one thing off my list of things to do--I got most of the front lawn and parking strip mowed, which makes the place look less abandoned, or at least so I fondly think. The internet runs sluggishly for me today. My head buzzes with random quotations--"It's all very strange and mysterious and I'm sure it's leading up to something," (Mrs. Drudge in The Real Inspector Hound); "What's the bird's-eye lowdown on this caper, whatever that means?" (Nick Danger); "If you didn't know the difference, you couldn't tell the difference" (a long-forgotten advertisement); "There aint much you can do with a bag of shit except bury it" (Huck Finn's pap according to Seelye).... It's like one of those scenes in old movies where voices from the past echo in some guy's mind (or at least on the soundtrack) except that these voices mean nothing. Brusha brusha brusha, get the new Ipana.... You can be sure if it's Westinghouse.... I can't believe I ate the whole thing.... You hate that cat, don't you?

Do they even make Ipana any more? Then what is the point of having this loop stuck in my head? It's talent round-up day, folks, or maybe we're going to have a special guest.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Lucky Strikes brings you The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion Tonto--or was it his Japanese valet Kato? Well, the Shadow knows. And the Death March of a Marionette means it's time to go to bed.

There's Logic For You

It's always rather surprising to see a conservative appeal to logic--their strong suit is fuzzy emotional appeals like those President Stay-the-Course Bush is so fond of, or the irrelevant invective of the Ann Coulters among them. But over at AlterNet I saw an example of conservative "logic" that was so bizarre I have to share it.

This was a reply by Conservativation to an article by Scott Ritter, one-time UN weapons inspector in Iraq. In the course of the article Ritter cited a book by Iraq war veteran Paul Reickhoff, who compared the Iraqi insurgents to the fictional "Wolverines" of the long-forgotten movie Red Dawn. Red Dawn is one of those endless trashy movies Hollywood comes out with year after year like Independence Day or The Passion of the Christ, where action substitutes for ideas and shock for internal logic. In it (as best I recall) a high-school football team takes on the Russian army after a successful invasion of the United States and somehow manages to win. Ritter summarizes Reickhoff as follows: "The Wolverines were heroes. The occupiers, frustrated by the tactics of the Wolverines, used increasingly brutal means of suppressing the insurgency, including taking out their revenge on the innocent civilian population. Reickhoff wrote of how he and his fellow soldiers, by invading and occupying Iraq, had reversed roles with the Iraqis. The Americans were now the brutal occupier, and the Iraqis were the 'Wolverines'."

Now I see many difficulties with this comparison. The Wolverines were fictional caricatures in a simplistic movie universe; the Iraqi insurgents are real people in a complex social and political environment. The Wolverines were a single group with a fairly clear goal; the Iraqi insurgents are many groups with differing goals and tactics. The Wolverines were a bunch of high-school students; the Iraqi insurgents appear to come from a wide variety of backgrounds. The Wolverines were Americans; the Iraqi insurgents are (for the most part) Iraqis. But neither Reickhoff nor Ritter suggested that the parallel was exact, and none of these objections really affect the point that Reickhoff was making.

Now Conservativation has his own objections--two of them--that he apparently thinks are "logical" and relevant. First, he observes, "The Wolverines never killed their own...." (Their own what he doesn't say.) I assume he must mean that the Iraqi insurgents do kill "their own". I'd like to see an example of that. Judging from the various reports coming out of Iraq, the insurgents are behaving as other resistance movements have done: targeting the occupying forces, collaborators with the occupying forces, and in some cases rival insurgent groups with different agendas. In no case have I seen an instance of an Iraqi insurgent group targeting "their own"--nor does it seem likely that they would. Any insurgent group that routinely killed its own members for no good reason would not survive very long.

If by "their own" Conservativation means fellow-countrymen who are collaborating with the enemy then he's way off-base. Whatever may have happened in the movies, real resistance movements deal harshly with traitors. They kill them. Take a look sometime at the history of the resistance against the Nazi occupiers. From the viewpoint of the insurgents collaborators are worse than the occupiers themselves. They are people who have sold out for power, or for money, or for some other sordid reason, and deserve whatever happens to them.

But, writes Conservativitis, the Wolverines never "beheaded innocents that were there to help...." Ah, but to help whom? The occupying forces? Remember, insurgents do not want the country to run smoothly under occupation--quite the reverse. Logic dictates the necessity of attacking those who help the occupiers even when such help consists of food for the hungry or medical aid for the sick and injured. It's not a pretty picture, but occupation never is.

"[M]aking the insurgents into heroes is a huge stretch," Conservatorium writes, adding irrelevantly "Iraqis may dislike the US, but they are not huge fans of these murderes [sic] either. They kill more Iraqis than Americans." But whether people are heroes or not is always a subjective issue. I have talked with people who regard George Armstrong Custer as a hero rather than a blithering blowhard with a flair for self-promotion. Thomas Edison, Andrew Jackson, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Billy the Kid, and even Adolf Hitler have their admirers. On the other hand the native Americans who ran an unsuccessful resistance movement against alien invaders in North America for many decades were seen (at least till recently) as bloodthirsty savages, and their names--Cochise, Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Captain Jack--were reviled. (And even today, not to wander too far from the point, it is considered acceptable to name a team the R-dsk-ns--one of the vilest epithets in the English language--where you'd never see let's say the San Francisco F-gs, the Tuscon W-tb-cks, or the Los Angeles N-gg-rs play in a national arena.)

Leaping nimbly from rooftop to rooftop, like the Tick on patrol, Conservatwhatever abruptly requests: "Please give me the list of other places in the world where we are breaking international law etc. The article says there are many others. Also, I guess Kosovo was not left from one President to another." While I don't undertake to reply for Scott Ritter, I can't find that either point is dealt with in his article. He does speak of US crimes in "Iraq and elsewhere"; maybe Conservilius equates "elsewhere" with "many others." I would suggest that torture at Gitmo, kidnappings in Italy, Pakistan and elsewhere, detention without trial of the innocent, extradition of suspects to Syria, warrentless spying in the US, are all crimes by any definition. (And if I weren't a Republican I'd find the mysterious election irregularities in 2004 extremely suspicious; the odds against them happening by chance are enormous. Fortunately Democrats, as far as I can tell, are all statistically illiterate, and incapable of seeing the impossibility of the reported results.)

I don't know what "logical" point Conservativeoration thought he was making about Kosovo. Ritter's point was that President Bush has no standard for victory and now admits that it will be up to some future president to figure out a way to get the US out of the mess he got it into. There is absolutely no parallel here to Kosovo, and even if there was, Ritter took no position on Kosovo in the first place (at least not in this article), so Conservativenation's illogical jump is--well, gibberish.

The absolute silliness of all this is incredible. The author wanders aimlessly through the Sudan, and into Rwanda, spewing invective but without stumbling onto a single point that has anything to do with the article to which he is supposedly replying. And then comes this priceless statement:

"I suggest a course in logic would be useful. I say that not to defend the war or the President, but to point out the utter lack of skill you have at making and defending points. It is not enough to allege folks, yet that's all you do, and when challenged, change subject to next allegation. Bush Lied...oh, um, Gitmo, oh well er, torture, er uh...whatever."

The pot criticising the kettle, the blind leading the blind. Scott Ritter's main point--that we should suspend judgment about the events of Haditha--is asinine. The military investigators didn't suspend judgment when they described four students and a taxi-driver as insurgents, or when they claimed that civilians were killed in an explosion when in fact they were shot. Facts are facts, and logic is logic. The military investigators saw no need to resolve inconsistencies in their original investigation, and instead put forth a potpourri of lies and speculation. They blew their credibility with that. Whether it was blithering incompetence or active participation in a cover-up doesn't really matter at this point. They got caught. No further military investigation is worth a damn.

But Conservativation's "utter lack of skill ... in making and defending points" is pitiful here. Does he address anything in the article? No. He engages in frivolous attacks on minor issues not related to the subject under discussion, and then attacks a straw man--some crazy person who makes points and when challenged changes the subject. (Conservativation is pretty good at subject-changing himself.) That person is not Scott Ritter. He goes on to say "It would also help your cause if occasionally you wrote a sentence that recognizes how vile, evil and animalistic the slow slicing off of heads can be," and then with complete illogic, jumps to "Finally, explain Canada being targeted. Are they not utopia?" (Need I mention that there is not one word about Canada in Ritter's article?)

And yet this irrational jumble of irrelevancies apparently passes for logical thought in this character's mind. Much of conservative thought (if that's not an oxymoron) is like this--emotional appeals, irrational jumps from subject to subject without rhyme or reason, pointless invective directed against an imaginary opponent--but this piece, to quote Aristophanes, takes the cake. To take this bucket of turds, tie a ribbon on it, and try to pass it off as logical discourse--well, it's priceless.

Conservatation concludes: "I respect good anti war positions. This article isn't one." His respect, to quote Chaucer, is "nat worth a tord; Thou doost nought elles but despendest tyme." Ritter's conclusion, however, is both sobering and chilling: "The scope and scale of our crimes, as manifested in Iraq and elsewhere, are mind-boggling. The indifference of the American people is mind numbing. And the wrath of history, which will judge all of us harshly, has yet to be felt." And that, friends, judged objectively, is beyond dispute.

Power Was His Principle

The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA: "His ruthlessness in pursuit of the Republican agenda, his willingness to shake down contributors, his ferocity in pursuit of political profit - all of these stemmed from a deep-seated conviction that he was right, and doing what was right justified pushing the rules to the limit and beyond."

No doubt Tom DeLay's resignation from Congress--always assuming that he actually does step down--is a good thing for the country. Not so good as his execution by firing squad in front of the Capitol building he so dishonored, but still a small step in the right direction. But as long as his ideological comrades remain in power--corrupt congressmen like Dolittle and Pombo, eco-criminals like Chiseling Charlie Hurwitz, paid-up members of the down-with-science club like Pat Robertson and our beloved president George stay-the-course Bush--it's small comfort. DeLay was nothing more than a tool, and now that he's a broken tool, the gods he served so assiduously have cast him aside as a piece of refuse on the garbage dump of life.

Corruption has become so endemic in public life that Americans treat it as normal--a perk of the office as it were. Radio and television stations that use the public airwaves not only accept bribes to run political messages, they demand them as a right. The need to raise money to pay these bribes requires that politicians in turn take bribes from groups with deep pockets--bribes that must be paid off with future political favors. Money becomes a form of political speech--and nobody protests. It's all part of the game they call democracy.

Not that DeLay and his gang actually believe in democracy. They work from a deep-seated belief that power rightfully belongs not to elected officials, but to unelected bureaucrats who are most adept at bending the rules of that other game Americans play--Capitalism--to their advantage. These guys--innovators like Ken Lay and his ilk--are the rightful bosses of us all. Why? Well, ours is not to question why, but to humbly accept the cards that the Hidden Hand (the god of Capitalism) deals us. However it comes out, we all know it's for the best, because that's the way Capitalism works.

Of course American Capitalism is only capitalistic in the same sense that American Democracy is democratic--nominally. There's no room for either in the brontosaurian bureaucracies of modern business or government. Instead we have a grotesque parody of both--"democratic" elections bought and paid for by the likes of Abramoff, and "competition" between industries for corporate welfare doled out by the likes of Rove. And tools like DeLay in the thick of things, making sure that everybody gets enough room at the trough--for a price.

And what about those who need medicine? Screw them, says Mr. DeLay, just so long as the pharmaceutical industry makes a bundle. The purity of our air and water? Not important, compared to the need of industry for coal and oil. Wildlife? No problem; there'll always be ranches where wingless quail can be shot--for a fee. Global warming? Hey, what a chance to sell air-conditioners.

The good news is that some people still see that what these guys are doing is wrong. It doesn't matter whether their shenanigans are technically legal--anybody can write a law after all--they are flat out wrong. Torturing prisoners (for whatever reason) is wrong. Taking bribes (however labeled) is wrong. Putting poisons in our air and water is wrong. Falsifying science is wrong. Invading other countries on trumped-up excuses is wrong. These are not things we should even be having a discussion about (though doing them in the name of the American people without such a discussion is also wrong). They are wrong, and the people who do them are criminals. They are enemies of the human race. The humane thing to do would be to remove them from society and put them somewhere that they could do no harm. The rational thing to do would be to shoot them without ceremony, and bury them secretly in unmarked graves lest some fool try to make martyrs of them.

Innocent Mix-Up

Howard Kaloogian, a Californian candidate for Congress, boldly charges that newspapers are misrepresenting the situation in Iraq--that things there are much more peaceful than represented. "...each day the news media finds [sic] any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it--in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism." In proof he shows a picture of a peaceful street scene, complete with western tourists, billboards, and a taxi, captioned "We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be." (House Candidate Draws Fire for Web Photo - Yahoo! News)

The trouble is, the picture that was supposed to be of Baghdad was actually taken in a suburb of Istanbul. This is somewhat akin to claiming that all is quiet on the streets of Paris and showing as proof a street scene taken in Helsinki.

The utter contempt this shows for the facts is breathtaking in its scope. The amazing thing is that the candidate thought he could get away with it.

It's not even a good fake--nothing is right about it for Iraq. The signs aren't even in Arabic script.

When it was called to the candidate's attention, did he apologize? Well, yes, sort of. "It was wrong," he is quoted as saying. "We're sorry." Who he's apologizing to and for what isn't clear however. He's not sorry about misleading the American people, apparently, since he reasserts his original claims the fake picture was intended to bolster. He's not apologizing for the hypocrisy of blaming news media for the lying that he himself was in fact doing.

In explanation of the lie he was caught in he says that "the military asked us to use our discretion and put things on the Internet that were nondescriptive ... (because) if we posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target." This somehow justifies claiming that Istanbul was somehow Baghdad? Does Kaloogian think that all foreign cities are one and the same? Or that his readers will think that? If the one is justified by military necessity in some manner, then why not simply take a picture of downtown San Francisco and label it Baghdad? The idiocy of this is beyond belief, and several light years past justification.

Or then there's his other explanation--the old I'm-not-lying-just-stupid defence so beloved by former president Ronald Reagan. It was just an "innocent mix-up"; that pictures from a stop in Istanbul got confused with those taken in Baghdad and apparently nobody in his self-described "Truth Tour" had the wit to tell the difference.

If he and his buddies are really that downright dumb, they should be listening to what their betters have to say rather than trying to instruct the American people from the depths of their vast ignorance.

And if he is as he appears to be--just another goddamn right-wing lying whore--then he should get the hell out of politics and take up something more in his line. Insurance fraud, perhaps.

Dream Journal

I waited, uncomfortably, seated with suited men and one quandary in the form of a four-star general, for the briefing to start. I had left my laptop in the school lunchroom next door and had only my quill and parchment to rely on--and besides, what if somebody made off with it? There were state secrets hidden among the naked pictures of cavorting young nymphs...

Our President, Ronald Reagan, younger and more confident than ever I had before seen him, slid into the room with a subdued fanfare from an invisible orchestra. "I have" (quoth he) "good news with which to tintabulate your ear. The Wicked Witch is dead."

A gasp undulated about the room. "But how--how did you pull that one off?"

"It was nothing," said Reagan modestly, "I just appointed forty new senators to replace those who were missing."

"Who were missing," I repeated stupidly, struggling with my quill. In my mind I saw somebody making off with my unprotected laptop. How would I ever explain it to the authorities, never mind my mother?

"Yes, missing," said Our President, zeroing in on me. I tried unsuccessfully to blend into the background. "They disappeared late yesterday afternoon. I had to use my executive privileges to have them replaced."

"Your executive privileges?" We were now strolling down a long hallway, conversing.

"Yes. 'In the event that a senator disappear mysteriously the President is empowered to appoint one or more new senators to fit his shoes'--Article Seven, section five."

"But forty senators--people will talk," I exclaimed anxiously. Not at Gitmo, came an unspoken thought, for the president was no longer available to voice it, and I was walking home along a dirt path. Menacing low-flying aircraft buzzed like flies overhead while I balanced on a log crossing over a creek.

Our worst president? I thought back to the long line of presidents who had addressed us from that same podium. Who could forget old Hick'ry Jackson's courageous defiance of the Supreme Court: "Thurgood Marshall has made his decision--but how many divisions does he have?" Or James K. Polk, who launched a war on a pretext so flimsy you could embroider it and call it a negligee. Or Harding, who handed out federal oil leases as party favors. Oh yes, it had been a rare and wonderful experience.

I was walking up the sidewalk to the front door of my house. Inside my mother was cooking dinner on the typewriter. "Mom," I said, calling her by her name, "I've got to go back to school. I accidentally left my laptop in the cafeteria. And, uh, incidentally--democracy is dead."

Strange Newes of the Absurditie of Anatomy

Black Monday--the day I should have taken out the yard debris to be carried off by the yard debris fairy. It was the loud crashing noises made by the yard debris fairy that woke me up this foul monday morning. I probably should have stayed in bed.

Cosmic Static

I crawled out of bed late this morning--say around six or so--and talked with Greg for a bit. We watched another installment of the curling competition at the Olympics; as far as I'm concerned it's an incomprehensible game that involves sliding rocks across the ice into something that looks vaguely like a target. It's nowhere near as boring as baseball to watch, even if somewhat baffling.

After I saw Greg off to work I took Zephyr for a walk up the street and fed the fishes. There was ice on top of their tanks and I had to break a hole in each to get the food to them. Since it's cold I suppose they won't eat much, but still--well, I don't know.

The cold is supposed to get worse; we're talking at least one day where the low will be say fifteen degrees and the high freezing. I'm not looking forward to any of it.

And then I came home to fight with the dishwasher, now entering its tenth year of being on its last legs. I thought at first maybe the pump had died, but it was only a clogged drain.

And that I guess brings me to here.

For Want of a Nail

Okay, we can't all be captain, as my father used to say, there has to be crew--there has to be something for you to do. Apparently in France they have something called a pig-squealing contest (not to be confused I guess with our own American hog-calling contest). Last August the AP circulated a picture of a man taking part in the contest. AP Protests Use of Photo in Controversy: "The picture shows a bearded man wearing fake pig ears, a pig nose, and a pink embroidered cap on his head. He was wearing the costume while participating in a pig-squealing contest at an annual festival in a farm village in southern France last summer." Okay, fair enough--so what?

So how did this picture help lead to riots, the burning of embassies, the destruction of property and the deaths of at least ten people?

Well, see, that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, as they used to say in my time. Somehow this picture got included with the eleven caricatures of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) that were published last September in a Danish newspaper. The Danish Muslim leader responsible for this had no explanation, except that it had been "sent to the group as an example of a provocation" according to the AP report. Earlier accounts claimed that it had been sent to an unnamed Muslim (presumably in Denmark) who apparently interpreted it as a depiction of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) as a pig. (Maybe a friend sent it to him as an example of the idiocies of the West?)

Somebody's been hoaxed here, and my money's on--well, okay, I don't know who's responsible. I do find it puzzling that the Danish delegation felt it necessary to add other material to the eleven caricatures, if those caricatures were the issue. There's no question about the eleven--why intermingle extraneous and irrelevant material then? Is it, as some have charged, because the cartoons themselves weren't considered inflammatory enough? In other words, is this just an elaborate publicity stunt for Islam?

In any case, it's clear that the Muslim rioters owe Denmark a humble and abject apology over this issue. Will they get one? I'm not holding my breath.

Chicago Tribune | Eric Zorn

Chicago Tribune | Eric Zorn: "The opinion of the Tribune's editorial page is that the cartoons were 'juvenile' and 'cheesy,' a judgment I don't share after going online to see them for myself"

Gates of Vienna: Anne Frank and Hitler, Reclining

I'm not sure what "Blog This" does, but I'm trying to create a link to Gates of Vienna: Anne Frank and Hitler, Reclining; the discussion of cartoons there is at least mildly interesting.

Why Hens Have No Teeth

Keep the mind perfectly still, place the fingers on the home keys, and begin typing. Whatever emerges--that's mindscum. Today's episode of mindscum features the Byzantine Majority Text, or maybe the Beatles' 1964 Australian Tour--it's sort of hard to tell the difference. The vitriol that has been thrown is sort of amazing, when you think about it. How much difference is there, say between the Textus Receptus and Ringo Starr? or between Jimmy Nicol and the Byzantine Majority Text? And if they can all be added together, do we really gain anything? Nicol I can't help but feel sorry for--where do you go from here? asks a reporter. Well, Ringo's going to join them in Brisbane, and then it's off to oblivion for me says Jimmy. And he disappears from the scene, a handsome guy with a drumset and no future. Still, it beats being a Spinal Tap drummer, I suppose.

But the Byzantine Majority Text--there's a losing concept. Let's count the readings, and see how many variants it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Create your own New Testament. Wanted: three thousand Greek calligraphers to write new version of the gospels; must be able to follow copy with ninety-five percent fidelity.... Who comes up with these things? Of course we could fall back on the Textus Receptus, the Mr. Ed of the textual world. Sure we know who created it, and when, and on what basis--but hey, Erasmus got it straight from the horse's mouth, or maybe from the Holy Ghost. Would he lie?

Throw the two into a pit and let them fight it out--two doddering old lamplighters on their last legs, throwing punches into the air and hoping for the best. Pitiful, just pitiful, as Jed Clampett might have observed. Like watching the Old Globe text duke it out with Pope's--is there some point to this? Where is Dr. Gonzo when you need him?

I wonder if Jimmy Nicol and Pete Best ever got together. Them two, Andy White, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr could get together and form an all ex-Beatles drummer band. It would probably have as much validity as the Byzantine Majority Text. At least you could dance to it.

Thinking about Christopher Marlowe, for no good reason--atheist, playwright, poet, and spy for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the First of England.... born some time this month four hundred and forty two years ago. (So was Galileo Galilei, come to think of it.) Transformed English drama with a handful of college buddies in his twenties--and dead before thirty. God, what a crew they were, these young men with their Senaca, their Ovid, their blank verse, and their incessant reading. Marlowe, Nash, Kyd and the bunch.

English theatre was in horrible shape till they hit the scene. Oh, yeah, we had the over-precious plays of Lyly to work with--and what else? Things like Common Conditions, and Sir Clyomen and Sir Clamydes--and believe me, these things have to be seen to be believed. (And how I wish I could for once see Clyomen and Clamydes--it's hard to believe it could ever have been performed, with its awkward fourteen-syllable rhymed verse and wholly preposterous situations.)

Standing on Fire

I have no topic but as usual my fingers will come alive on the keyboard and make words until sense follows. This may or may not have some sane point, but nobody is reading this anyway. Certainly not me.

The night has been filled with images of Orientalists and infighting, with ancient peoples and modern, and with scrolls and palm leaves. I remember reading the Koran for the first time--a copy that had the suras (or chapters or whatever they are) in the wrong order, or at any rate in an order different from the traditional. I had to go back to the index repeatedly to read it in sequence. I was in a high-school gym, seated on bleachers, while people were screaming all around me. (I'm not sure why, now--maybe some event was in progress.) I was working my way through a long piece on "Women" and I had the thought--my god, what a long-winded asinine piece of boring garbage this is. In a way it was a heretical thought--I felt committed to the notion that there was some "good"--some piece of significance anyway, some reason, some purpose, something--in any piece of literature people had chosen to deify. Even Gone with the Wind.

The Rig-Veda had kind of shook me up in that respect, but at least it had the charm of antiquity. It is not unreasonable that in trying to get in touch with people over ten thousand miles and three thousand years away the connection might be faulty. But the Koran was born in the full glaring light of history--it was written down on palm leaves, and assembled in a big council immediately after the death of its creator--why did people read it? What were they thinking? It was like reading Atlas Shrugged.

It was a moment only, and I went back to inputting data, taking it in as I took in other stuff--provisionally. Some day I would read it in Arabic, I told myself, and I could form a real opinion.

But that day never came. At school I had a choice among several possible languages, and actually signed up for Arabic--but at the last minute a chance to learn Coptic came up, and I switched. I figured that Arabic would come later--but so far it hasn't. And I haven't learned Chinese for the Tao Te Ching or Spanish for Don Quixote either.

Translations are always unsatisfactory, somehow. Like listening to a description of a banquet rather than being there.

Outrage

Today's quick pick of various random blogs found some in foreign tongues, and some equally incomprehensible even though in English. The only one I stumbled into that made sense to me was this one I guess called Our Vortex or something like that.

Okay, sorry about that--something just killed my browser and I lost most of the rest of this post. It's discouraging to try to repeat myself, but I'll give it a stab. "Somebody, somewhere, will use these cartoons as a pretext for violence," this author wrote. "But don't expect me to have any sympathy or understanding for their cause. All they're doing is proving the cartoonist's point."

This is the thing that gets me. These maniac Muslims make it perfectly clear that the newspaper in question was right--their attitudes are indeed a menace to freedom of the press. You can try to spin that in any direction you like, blasphemy, politeness, whatever--and it still comes down to that. These guys have the same attitude toward the press that Stalin, Mao, and George III did--the press is free to print anything it likes, so long as they agree with it. That way lies--well, I don't remember what I wrote before, but something slimy and probably spineless is what it looks like.

The thing is, as this guy wrote, "I have the right to outrage you just as much as you have the right to outrage me. Put down the Kalishnikov, grow up, and join the Goddamn world community." It's high time. And by the by, if you've got to boycott something, take a lesson from our own Dixichristians--boycott somebody who can make a difference. Don't pick targets at random or call for government apologies--it just makes you look like loons. What you want to do is go after the pocketbook of the publisher. That will get their attention.

Tempests for Two

I overslept again, probably an effect of this miracle medication I'm taking, but who knows? I see by the news today that we who complain about being censored by people with opinions are being bigoted and narrow-minded and right-wing, or at any rate insensitive to the beliefs of others. Okay, let me put it this way....

All my life people have trampled on my beliefs. People have ridiculed them, kicked them around, and told me in no uncertain terms to shut up. My fifth grade teacher told me that I was clinically insane for believing in the scientific fact of evolution, not merely Darwin's theory of the causes of it. (She also believed that "nobody really knows what electricity is or how light switches work--we just take it all on faith" and that the abbreviation Xmas is some sort of conspiracy to take the Christ out of Xmas and that "a noun is a person place or thing" so she may not be the best guide to what is sane or insane.) A guy recently told me that saying "Happy Holidays" is an insult to Christians. Still another proclaims loudly that objectivity is some sort of Western con, rather than an achievable state. Tolerance, I am told, is the easy way out and only the irrational is worth believing.

Whatever. I know there are a lot of people out there who don't share my beliefs. It would be a much duller world if everybody else did. (It would probably also be a much safer world in many respects; and as we followed the buffalo herds we would all have animated discussions about the possibilities of some day domesticating animals, or maybe planting edible grains for ourselves.) Every day animists, patriots, christians, libertarians, baconians, muslims, objectivists, canonical critics, and devotees of the Byzantine text of the New Testament are doing things that (if I knew about them) would offend me deeply. When they come to my attention I am outraged. Just because I don't go out on some rabid snark hunt, jumping wildly about and making a monkey of myself, doesn't mean I'm not infuriated. It does mean that I've got better things to do.

If I buy into this notion that certain muslims and their western apologists are making--that every time somebody says, writes, or draws something they might find offensive, somebody owes them an apology, then, by the same token, every time somebody says, writes, or draws something I find not merely offensive, but downright filthy, I am owed an abject and irrevocable apology. In this spirit, I submit a list:

People who Owe Me Apologies

(1) Donald Rumsfeld: If for nothing else, for his callous reaction to the destruction of one of the great temples of knowledge in this world: "Stuff happens." Practically every time he has opened his mouth in public, it was to say something so contemptable that even a civilized person might be tempted to throw something in his general direction--a rotten egg at least, or maybe a small explosive object of some kind.

(2) General Peter Pace: His outrageous misrepresentation of a cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post--a cartoon whose meaning is obvious to the meanest intellect--as anti-serviceman, is an insult not only to all Americans, but to all thinking people everywhere.

(3) Michelle Mashraqi: Her claim that "The press is very disrepectful if they see the outrage as Muslim's rebuking free press" is utterly offensive to all believers in the free press everywhere. This is not an issue of what Muslims believe--this is a matter of what free people are allowed to do or say. She, and any others expressing this inane viewpoint, are being deliberately disrespectful to all of us, and especially to me.

In fact, as I start thinking about all the people who owe me apologies on this basis, I start feeling a bit overwhelmed. Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons not to think about it. I really do have better things to do. And I suggest that if these protesters don't have better things to do, they should at least make a start by re-evaluating their lives.