Category: The Dish

I’ve been pondering the astonishing bravado of the president’s statement last week:

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it – and I will not authorize it."

I knew it reminded me of something and yesterday, it hit me. Bush’s statement is true in his own private universe, and the criterion of his version of truth depends entirely on what the meaning of the word "torture" is. I think what you have to do is think of George W. Bush’s statement in the same light as Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that he had not had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Both statements are semantic evasions to avoid a direct lie. Each man is using a private dictionary to redefine a word otherwise clear to any other rational person. But the broader conclusion is obvious: Clinton lied about an extra-marital affair in a civil sexual harrassment lawsuit. Bush is lying about one of the core featurs of a civilized and decent society in the middle of a vital war. The Republicans ridiculed Clinton for his linguistic somersaults – and even impeached him for it. They are mostly silent today. A telling contrast, I’d say.

I’m a big fan of burp and fart jokes. Call me juvenile. And you don’t have to click on a YouTube of Jessica Simspon burping. But if you felt like a diversion …

The recently fired blogger for the New Republic is, in some ways, a treasure. He was dumped for writing for his own comments section under a pseudonym. But what’s quite wonderful is what he actually wrote about himself. Here’s an example unearthed by blogger JMW:

How angry people get when a powerful critic says he doesn’t like their favorite show! Like little babies. Such fragile egos. Siegel accuses Stewart of a "pandering puerility" and he gets an onslaught of puerile responses from the insecure herd of independent minds. I’m well within Stewart’s target group, and I think he’s about as funny as a wet towel in a locker room. Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.

Remember this is Siegel arguing that Siegel is wittier than Jon Stewart ever will be. Yes, I have an ax to grind. Siegel accused me of anti-Semitism in Harper’s Magazine, using as proof my attacks on anti-Semitism. But I will miss his hilarious cultural criticism:

Pairs proliferate throughout the film, reminders of our double natures. A sculpture in Ziegler’s house, seen at the beginning of the film, is of two figures, a winged one bending over another without wings; people lift both their arms and raise both their hands; there are symmetrical doors and coffee cups; in Ziegler’s billiard room, you see two pineapples, a perfect image of the banal duality of our desires.

The following Slate diary won the Poseur Alert of the Year a while back. It’s still a classic.

Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel … Oh! There you are. This "Diary" creeps up on you in the most unguarded moments. I recently improved my condition from self-intoxication to self-obsession, and I was just doing some lunchtime exercises‚ÄîI ate lunch around 1:30 today; my cat Maya poached some salmon from Citarella‚Äîmeant to bring me to the next stage, which is self-absorption. Dr. von Hoffenshtoffen, whom I mentioned yesterday, devised these "identity calisthenics," as he calls them. I think they’re helping, but this Diary, with its emphasis on "I," gave me a "soul hernia" (another Hoffenshtoffenian phrase).

How will we live without him?

"Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s anger is unquestionably justified. The version that I saw has her self-righteously owning up to actions that effectively tipped off Osama bin Laden to a strike against his Afghan training camp. "We had to inform the Pakistanis," the movie’s Albright insists.

The real Albright says she neither did nor said such a thing and that the meeting we see in the movie never took place. The 9/11 Commission report, on which the film is partly based, says it was a senior military official who told the Pakistanis. The portrait of Albright is an unacceptable revision of recent history and an unfair mark on a public servant who, no matter her shortcomings, doesn’t deserve to be remembered by millions of Americans as the inadvertent (and truculent) savior of Osama bin Laden," JPod, in the NYPost.

What a great phrase to describe the increasingly shrill rhetoric of the dead-end Bushies.   

He’s in the news. He’s a comic genius. But you haven’t appreciated Borat till you’ve seen him in the gym.

… about the Bush war crimes bill? You’re supposed to be. Marty Lederman, however, is here to help. It’s the best analysis yet written on the complicated subject. Read it. Carefully.

Solon, Ohio, 3 pm. (And, yes, I know it looks professional, but after corresponding with the reader, it’s legit.)

A reader writes:

The reason Democrats haven’t attack GWB’s "unseriousness" on the war is because their left wing base is so anti-war, anti-American power, that they would repudiate any Democratic Party leader who tried to run to the right of Bush on the conduct of the War.

Its enough to bring me to despair.  We have on one hand a party that recognizes that we are in a war with an implacable enemy, but it has waged that war in an incompetent manner, taking on burdens for the country without fully explaining them to either the American people or to itself.  On the other hand we have political party that gives lip-service to "internationalism" but which is at heart actually isolationist and unwilling to see American power projected beyond the confines of our borders even when it is necessary and just. 

For persons of my mindset, who believe in the Powell doctrine (which is really only Jacksonian foriegn/military policy for the 21st century), it is a state of affairs which leaves us despairing of any hope for the future.

Is there someone out there that can rescue the country from the follies of our two political parties?

McCain? Giuliani? Obama? Gore?

"I think what they’re trying to do is to take the fact the specific scenes portrayed were fictional and to try to refute the underlying reality that the Clinton administration just didn’t get it. And by the way, before 9/11 neither did the Bush administration," – 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. I have no idea why the Clinton administration should get a pass in dithering while a mortal threat gathered in the 1990s. I hope ABC stands firm.