Month: May 2009

The NYT And A 13 Year-Old

Listen up, Bill Keller. A reader writes:

Last night my 13 year old daughter happened to see one of the short clips of someone being waterboarded that they show on the news when discussing "enhanced interrogation techniques".  She asked in a sort of amazed way, "What are they doing!"  "Waterboarding him",  I answered.  She asks, "what's that?"  I decided to let her make up her own mind, so I kind of danced around it.  "It's something they do to try to get information out of someone." 

Her response: "Oh, you mean torture?"

Yeah: you know. In English. The same word the NYT used when it wasn't sucking up to Dick Cheney.

The Pointless Matthew Shepard Act

So far as I can see, it should be renamed the Give HRC A Reason To Keep Asking For Money Act. As Steve Chapman notes:

If federal licensing laws required disclosure of the ingredients in congressional legislation, here's what the label on this one would say: 90 grams of empty symbolism and 10 grams of needless duplication.

Quote For The Day

"As a child in Tibet, I was keenly curious about how things worked. When I got a toy I would play with it a bit, then take it apart to see how it was put together. As I became older, I applied the same scrutiny to a movie projector and an antique automobile. At one point I became particularly intrigued by an old telescope, with which I would study the heavens. One night while looking at the moon I realized that there were shadows on its surface. I corralled my two main tutors to show them, because this was contrary to the ancient version of cosmology I had been taught, which held that the moon was a heavenly body that emitted its own light. But through my telescope the moon was clearly just a barren rock, pocked with craters. If the author of that fourth-century treatise were writing today, I'm sure he would write the chapter on cosmology differently.

If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview," – the Dalai Lama.

The Jokes Of Washington

Apropos Ms Sykes, a reminder of what once went on:

Absolutely determined that a good time would be had by all, and equally determined to bring down the house, Richard Nixon appeared as the final act. The curtain pulled back to reveal the president and Vice President Spiro Agnew seated at two modest black pianos (Dwight Chapin at the White House had requested grand pianos or at least baby grands but the Statler Hilton could only manage uprights). This was the first time a chief executive had appeared on the Gridiron stage, and Nixon opened by asking: "What about this 'southern strategy' we hear so often?" "Yes suh, Mr. President," Agnew replied, "Ah agree with you completely on yoah southern strategy." The dialect, as Wilkins observed, got the biggest boffo.

After more banter with the "darky" Agnew, Nixon opened the piano duet with Franklin Roosevelt's favorite song ("Home on the Range"), then Harry Truman's ("Missouri Waltz"), then Lyndon Johnson's ("The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You"). Agnew, drowned him out a few bars into each with a manic Dixie on his piano, and the Gridiron crew got louder and louder. "The crowd ate" it up," Wilkins observed. "They roared."

The Fruits Of Cheney

Two Americans captured by the North Koreans and about to be put on "trial" prompted this nugget from a news story:

"The rumor was that they are being housed at one of the guest villas," said Han S. Park, a University of Georgia expert who was visiting North Korea as part of a private U.S. delegation after the women were captured. Park told CNN International that the North Koreans scoffed at any suggestion that the Americans were receiving harsh treatment. "They laughed. 'We are not Guantanamo.' That's what they said," Park said.

We may want to "move forward". But those in the wider world – the tyrants and the persecuted – keep seeing what's behind us. And until we face and cauterize it, they always will.