The Dish

Several readers have said I misunderstod the lyrics of the song, for which the Marine has now apologized. Listening closely again, I think I did – thanks to a much better video recording of the performance. The lyric I thought I heard and transcribed from the now-deleted YouTube video was:

"Then I hid behind the TV and locked a load in my M-16 and I blew those little girls to eternity."

But there’s a tiny swear-word editing gap in the YouTube video which renders the word "little f**kers" as "little kers". In the context, I thought I heard "girls" rather than "kers." It didn’t help that the sound isn’t synced with the video. And so it seems the Marine is talking about blowing the son and father away, rather than the girls. My mistake. But even on this interpretation, this Marine’s tale is of grabbing an innocent little girl as a human shield, and laughing maniacally as "blood sprayed between her eyes." And if you watch the video again, you’ll see a broad smile flicker across the guy’s face as he sings about the little girl’s face being blown apart. You can read a celebration of this song over at LGF, and a much better video. (Malkin is "disgusted" that anyone be in any way offended. Smiling at the thought of a little girl’s head being blown apart is fine by her.) The full lyrics are at BlackFive, which is also thrilled with the song. Money quote:

Thanks to Michael in MI for sending the lyrics and one high-freakin-larious leatherneck for writing and performing this. Holmes if they bring any scunion your way believe me, we will fire all we have.

I’m glad to correct the lyric. I’m not glad this happened. And it’s hard for me to understand anyone who is. (P.S. Check out the posting in the second trackback of my first post.)

As so often, readers fill in the details about the election of the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I found this one helpful:

Part of the background to the SBC presidential election was a recent controversy over "speaking in tongues": not what SBC policy was on it, but whether the SBC should have a policy. A miscellaneous official of the SBC had made a decision that anyone who spoke in tongues even in private should not serve as an international missionary from an SBC church.

Central to the entire Protestant project, which the SBC is of course part of, is the notion of the priesthood of the believer: that absent the core matters of Christianity, the doctrine you personally adhere to is between no one but you and God. Many Southern Baptists saw the restriction of mission work based on strictly private belief as highly incompatible with this tenet. The recent widow of pastor Adrian Rogers, a well-loved old lion of the SBC, spoke forcefully against the restriction at this year’s convention.

Here’s another take:

As a lapsed Southern Baptist with numerous close relatives who are ministers, I can assure you that the election of Dr. Page signifies no real turning point there. It reflects merely a change of tone, not of policy.

This phase of the Baptists’ history can be traced back to 1980, when the hard-right wing seized control of the denomination and commenced a slow, methodical purging of any moderate leaders and congregations. The far right has maintained their dominance of the church even as their drive for new members has leveled off – a cause for real alarm, as Dr. Page’s comments indicate. In recent years the moderate congregations – roughly 1/3 of the SBC – have formed their own alliance in the hopes of countering the extremism of the hard right. They haven’t had much success, alas. In their courses and administrative policies, the seminaries have pushed to rid themselves of any moderating perspectives, which smack (to them) of humanism and relativism. (In private conversations I’ve heard the seminaries described, perhaps unfairly, as Baptist "madrasas.") One cousin elected to attend one seminary over a rival because of its commitment to extremist positions.

In matters of reproductive choice, stem cell research, gay equality, science and technology, Ten Commandments in courtrooms and all the rest, the Baptists will work long and hard to advance their Christianist agenda. Their softer tone only means they’re concerned that they won’t be able to meet their membership quotas if they continue to be "against" things rather than "for" them.

Thanks for the perspectives.

An American Marine sings a song about an Iraqi woman. Money quote:

"I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally… Then I hid behind the TV and locked a load in my M-16 and I blew those little girls f***kers to eternity."

The Pentagon has condemned it. The crowd of soldiers can be heard cheering. The YouTube version can be found here.

Update: A reader comments:

I’m an American Muslim, and I understand that this is gallows humor. I actually found it kind of funny.  That being said, I also believe this doesn’t really reflect well on the quality of our fighting men. I know it is forbidden to criticize soldiers in the new militarized America, but the fact that after three years, our Marine’s inability to speak Arabic is a source of comedy, rather than a source of shame, is well, pathetic.

But hey, when you’re fighting a war of choice and your leaders change justifications like underwear, that’s what you get right? You get the ignorant masses from two nations killing each other out of a misplaced and ginned up hate for one another.

I understand the "Team America" references, I understand the need to let off steam, I know soldiers in previous wars never had to be exposed like this … and yet, it seems more than a little dispiriting that a U.S. Marine is bragging that he can kill two unarmed little girls.

Zoe Williams wants a third wave of feminists to stop saying "vagina" as if it were transgressive and grab the third linguistic rail of post-feminism. I’m not writing it. But she does. And the Guardian prints it.

Some amusing redesign for the newly re-released DVD of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Here’s the old design:

Here’s the new one:

Hmmm. That font; the new positioning of the characters; the eyes cast ambiguously at cross-purposes; no action shot; the sexual ambiguity of the movie as a whole. Remind you of anything? Like this, for example:

Weep, Mickey, weep.

Who’s worse? Mickey ponders … A reader responds:

Let’s see… Moulitsas comment was made, off the cuff in the heat of an internet discussion thread. Coulter’s remarks were pondered, carefully scripted, read, re-read, edited, re-edited over several months and finally published in book form. Moulitsas was expressing outrage at men who choose to wage to war for profit (mercenaries). Coulter is expressing outrage at widows (or "witches" and "harpies" to use her words) who dare criticize the President.

Who’s worse? If you even have to ask the question it means you haven’t really thought about it.

A reader writes about my discussion of Bill Maher’s political instincts and Bob ‘Worse Than Useless" Shrum:

I have had many, many discussions about what the 2004 race would have looked like if Rove ran Kerry’s campaign instead of Bush’s. Think how often you would have seen this ad:

The morning of 9/11, Bush being told America is under attack. He doesn’t get up. Start the clock on the bottom. Go split-screen. On the right, we see what the firemen and police were doing in NYC at exactly the same time – rushing to the scene, making plans, acting. In the left half you’d see a man frozen. In the right half you’d see nothing but action and the beginnings of heroism.
Cut to three or four minutes later. On the left side of the screen Bush is still sitting there, paralyzed. On the right side of the screen, firefighters and police officers are rushing into the building. News crews are moving in. Everyone is moving. Just not the President.
Cut to six minutes in. Same thing.
Come back to Bush, full screen, in the moment where he actually begins rocking back and forth a bit.
Tag line beneath Bush: "On 9/11, George W. Bush froze."
"Is this the man you want in charge when the next attack comes?"

You could have run that ad over and over again, using footage from different points in the attack on the right, with the same frozen president on the left side. Over and over.
The theory is pure Rove – what’s Bush’s strong point? People liked him on 9/11. So what do you go straight after? How Bush reacted on 9/11. Luckily, you didn’t even have to make it up – and you had video tape to prove it.

In my view, the only successful Democratic campaign in 2008 will run on how to win the war, despite this administration’s record of incompetence, brutality and arrogance. But my best bet is that they’ll hire Shrum again, and lose.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

A reader observes:

"You wrote about how people are changing the history of the Pledge of Allegiance; from the 1899 picture it also seems that the ‘put your hand over your heart’ part has been re-done as well. As a child in the 1970s, we put our hands flat against our chest over our heart when saying the Pledge. I did not recognize what the children in the picture were doing with their hands until I said the words "put your hand over your heart" and saw that is literally what they are doing. I wonder when/why that tradition changed?"

I’m not sure. But the tradition has been different over the century or so since the pledge was concocted. Here’s another version:

I think we know why that went out of fashion. Wikipedia’s take is here.

One’s a comedian; the other is a nice guy who has helped destroy what’s left of the Democratic party. Here are their pieces of advice to the Democrats. Bill first:

Go for the jugular as the Republicans always do with Democrats. Just keep saying, "The Republicans lost the war in Iraq." Scare the hell out of people about all the ways we are unsafe: from global warming to terrorists so easily being able to penetrate ports or nuclear and chemical plants.

Beneath the comedy, it’s a great point. The real criticism of this administration is that they have screwed up a war they descibed as vital to our national security. Call them on it! Outflank them on national security. Of course, to do that, you actually have to believe in fighting the terrorist enemy on his terrain, recognizing the still-great danger and wanting to win in Iraq. And that’s not true of a lot of Democrats, who think we have already lost. Which brings us to Shrum:

The war in Iraq is over except for the dying. Campaign for a date to bring our forces home. Speak for Americans on big issues like gas prices, health care, the environment and alternative energy. Don’t be afraid to say we’re for the people, not the powerful. Be Democrats — for a change.

This has to be the dumbest piece of advice ever. Don’t be afraid to say we’re for the people, not the powerful. Isn’t that how Al Gore lost an unlosable election? It may be ideological cialis for Shrum’s generation, but it’s the phoniest, most hackneyed crap to most voters. It evinces the same cringe-factor as that awful Democratic talking point about "working families." The transparent condescension of the entire rhetoric is invisible only to them. How, one wonders, does this man stay in business? He has been saying the same thing for decades. Every campaign he has run that has followed his advice has failed. He’s a lovely man, but it must be said you’d get better political analysis from a random person on the subway. There are a lot of people out there who could use the money. Why piss it away on Shrum one more time?

Coconut Creek, Florida, 10 am, yesterday.