The Dish

All I know from the radio is that the Pope has discounted, or dust dissed, the so-called Gospel of Judas, a heterodox new piece of the old puzzle that shows Jesus and his betrayer as confidantes with a complex, interwoven relationship that doesn’t align with the Sunday school verities. I admit that I haven’t done the research that would allow me to join the fray on this, but today, Good Friday, I do find myself reflecting on the labor that has gone on for all these many hundreds of years to keep the door shut on the Bible such that nothing new comes into it and nothing old goes out. This all-too-human effort, carried out in the name of the divine, has been, I suppose, a boon to orthodoxy but has done a disservice, perhaps, to the Creation. It’s created a book of one-dimensional fixity in a world of creative uncertainty. And now here comes a point of view on Jesus that seems incompatible with the accepted stories. I understand the threat this represents to the iron editors of scripture, but I don’t understand why it should bother anyone else. The universe, God’s universe, was made with depths and angles unfathomable. A testament that reflects this truth doesn’t frighten me at all.

–Walter

I don’t know all the ins and outs of the current uproar over Democratic Rep. Alan B. Mollohan and his finances. Hopefully, federal investigators can promptly determine whether or not the honorable gentleman from West Virginia did, among other alleged outrages, help funnel upwards of $178 million in federal funds to nonprofits run by a few of his more reliable campaign contributors. And if he is indeed guilty, Democrats should promptly force Congressman Mollohan to commit political hara kiri on the House floor in front of God and C-SPAN.

In the meantime, however, Nancy Pelosi should go ahead and ask Mollohan to take a break from his duties on the ethics committee. In part, I don’t want to see Mollohan become a tool for GOPers hoping to put Dems on the defensive about ethics and thus take the “culture of corruption” issue off the table altogether.

But I also don’t want Mollohan to become a scapegoat for an increasingly worthless ethics committee. Already Denny Hastert has suggested that Mollohan’s personal situation is at the root of the committee’s recent inactivity. It’s a lovely theory—especially if you’re a Republican tired of making excuses for Delay, Ney, Cunningham, etc. Unfortunately, it ignores the fact that the House ethics committee may be the single most useless, if not downright counterproductive entity operating in Washington—which, yes, I know, is saying quite a bit. I am on record calling for the dissolution of the entire committee. And while I realize my hope is little more than a fantasy, I hate to see Mollohan even for an instant allow anyone to use the one-bad-apple argument to take the heat off a truly pathetic congressional institution.

—Michelle

Today’s Washington Post mentions a recent study by a pair of British researchers who found that shorter women are more likely to value having children than taller women and less likely to value their careers. (For more details, check out this October piece from The Scotsman) Question: Who comes up with these studies–and how on earth do people get funding for them? What exactly is the practical use for such findings? Should employers start weeding out all applicants under 5′ 5" on the assumption they’ll eventually abandon the fast track to make babies? Should men longing for multiple offspring dump their Amazonian girlfriends? In any case, my bet is that the folks at eHarmony are already scrambling to incorporate this information into their infamous compatibility profiles.

—Michelle

Today’s New York Times leads with two more retired military chieftains calling for Rummy’s head. That brings the total up to six–not counting various anonymous assaults. But please let me know the moment someone else piles on. It may be time to start the betting pool on exactly how many retired generals must publicly kick the don of Defense before Bush gets the itch to send Rumsfeld the way of Andy Card.

— Michelle

It may still be too early in the morning to talk about Jennifer Aniston’s private parts, but what the hey. Check out this cultural tidbit from Ross Douthat. (Caution: It has nothing to do with Christianists or the civil-rights movement.)

—Michelle

Sorry, but the first thing that pops to mind when something is referred to as ‚Äúpornographic,‚Äù particularly in the metaphorical sense, is not that it is staged. More to the point, it’s not the attacks themselves that I regard as pornographic (you may have hit the nail on the head with ‚Äúdemonic‚Äù), but rather the replaying of them for, perhaps not the express purpose, but certainly the purpose of provoking a gut-level, oh-my-God, can‚Äôt-look-away response both in the Moussaoui jurors and in the readers of the newspapers that didn‚Äôt just report on the tapes, but ran the transcripts in special little boxes complete with colorful graphics and reconstructed timelines. Graphic detail. Specific intent to provoke. Even without Paris Hilton involved, I’m sticking with "pornographic."

As for your serene indifference to Moussaoui‚Äôs fate: I envy you but obviously disagree. Not paying attention to how our government dealt with these death-loving holy warriors in the past has led to some nasty consequences. Without question, the United States can‚Äôt worry so much about fueling anti-American sentiment that we in any way compromise national security, but if you really think this guy‚Äôs sentencing doesn’t matter one way or the other, why even risk turning him into a poster child for the cause? You can argue that justice demands that Moussaoui die or even that the victims‚Äô families deserve closure, but to argue that you can‚Äôt be bothered… I‚Äôd feel better about that stance if I thought the bad guys (and potential bad guys) were content to stay home folding their laundry as well. 

—Michelle

      

This is the danger and the beauty, Andrew, of letting two writers sub for you at once.

Michelle: How can a tape recording of the struggle on hijacked, crashing Flight 93 be “pornographic?” Then life is pornographic. And maybe so. But I was affected by what happened that morning — emotionally, politically, imaginatively — and I don’t feel guilty about my interest in knowing exactly how such crimes go down and in hearing the voices of people trying to foil one. Pornography, remember, is staged. This is something else entirely. (Demonism, maybe.) Though perhaps the terrorists have some right to privacy. I mean, what kind of country are we becoming when four consenting adult males can’t commit fanatical mass murder in the privacy of their own jet airliner?

Honestly, I don’t care what they do with him. Let the system work its will — I have dishes to do, wet laundry to dry. If a bulletin comes on the radio announcing that Mr.M (my contempt for whom is such that I’ve never bothered to learn to spell his name) has been sentenced to die, I’ll probably just open up the dryer and toss a sheet of Bounce into the load.

“And the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

–Walter

A few readers have pointed out (and many more are thinking), that the Domino Effect or Domino Theory that so excited folks back in the days of Vietnam is not identical to the Tipping Point notion that influenced the planners of the Iraq campaign. But I lumped them together for a reason. The Domino Theory was a fear that that once Vietnam fell to the communists, the rest of Asia would go on falling, while the Tipping Point idea was a hope that once Iraq jumped up to welcome democracy, the rest of the Middle East would go on rising. The ying-and-yang of military psuedo-science drawn from frothy management books.

I wonder if they ‘firewalk’ at the Pentagon? Or if Cheney has ever let himself fall backwards into Rumsfeld’s arms as a team-building, trust-enhancing exercize? They could all do it, right on back to McNamara. All the clever former CEOs.

I liked General Patton’s ideas much better, the bloody old coot. They arose from what he’d seen and suffered through, not from books he’d skimmed on airplanes. Or had his assistants skim on airplanes.

If Jack Welch gets a call about Iran we’ll know that Armageddon looms.

–Walter

I’m sorry, but I can only bring myself to skim today’s reports on the playing of the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93 for jurors in the Moussaoui trial. The pleading, the struggling, the creepy chanting about Allah as the hijackers prepared to slaughter a planeload of people. I know it’s important for everyone to remember how horrifying the attacks were, but the tidbits in today’s papers border on the pornographic.

This of course is exactly the gut-level revulsion that the Moussaoui prosecutors are hoping to provoke in jurors now deciding whether to sentence this sorry excuse for a human being to death. But while I see the logic of their strategy, I question its rightness. The contents of these tapes can only cloud jurors’ ability to approach their sentencing duties with anything resembling reason, and theirs is too important a duty to carry out based on raw emotion.

It‚Äôs not that I doubt that Moussaoui is complete scum. But there is a strong case to be made that he does not deserve to die‚Äînot because death would be too harsh a penalty, but because it would be too easy. I mean, how bad can the idea of lethal injection be to a guy who was ready to fly a plane into a building? So while I personally believe that, in a just world, Moussauoi would be torn apart by angry ferrets, I can‚Äôt help but question our rush to turn him into a shining example of martyrdom for all his aspiring terrorist pals. Better to throw the failed jihadist into a cell with a large, surly redneck with a scorching case of xenophobia and let him spend the rest of his miserable life learning about pain and terror firsthand. —Michelle

There, I’ve plugged my new novel on Slate.Com, just as Andrew asked me to as part of the successful charm offensive that convinced me to do something — help fill in for him — that I swore I’d never do again when I dropped exhausted into bed after trying it the first time late last summer. But I have "product" now, as they say in Hollywood, and because my product is on the Web, just a click away from Andrew’s product, here I am. With my long, un-Webbish sentences, my inability to put up links and my lack of interest (based on inability) in delivering little excerpts from outside articles. These flaws and incompetencies were pointed out to me — massively, repeatedly, acidically– during my last stop here. Get connected, lazybones.

The Unbinding is my attempt to do that. It’s a novel that’s not just being published on the Web, it’s being written there. The whole idea seemed gimmicky at first (oh no, not hypertext; not pictures; not tricky sounds) but now I’m realizing that it’s not at all. It represents a return to fundamentals. Much as blogging is returning journalism to its arresting, imperfect, assertive origins, spinning a tale before one knows the ending, and doing so without the opportunity to double back and fiddle with the beginning, is storytelling in its wild, natural state. (Although The Unbinding has an expert editor, Meghan O’ Rourke, who trained at the New Yorker.) Next time you make up a children’s bedtime story, you’ll see exactly what I mean. The only direction is onward. Trust in inspiration, not second thoughts. In foresight, not hindsight. In spells, not science. And glance around the bedroom for ideas. That painting of a sailing ship? It’s time to send one of your characters to sea, perhaps. That other painting of an idyllic farm? That’s what your character dreams of once he’s shipwrecked on the barren Pacific island.

But long stories in prose have become confused with books, which is like confusing music with CDs or art with galleries. Books are merely shipping containers for stories. Unfortunately, the stories designed to fit in books are becoming, it seems to me, more and more like iceberg lettuce — genetically manipulated to travel well and not to rot, turn colors or change in taste (which motivates growers to first remove their taste) during the roughly year-long interval between being finished and landing in the store. To switch images, such stories are studio albums, not concert recordings. Poses, not performances.

I sound like a Beat poet. "That’s typing, not writing," Capote said of Kerouac’s On the Road, which fiction’s great jazz man, lacking a computer, poured out onto a scroll of teletype paper (after having meditated on it for ages). Well, whatever it was, at least his masterpiece wasn’t Breakfast at Tiffanys — a vaccum-packed little preservative-sprayed nodule of absolute elegance and pert inertia. Capote’s book became a movie, which kept it in print and spread its name. Kerouac’s book has never spawned a movie, and it goes on selling (wildly, unstoppably, to people who want to read it, not just own it) despite the fact. Because On the Road was a movie in the first place. A movie which swept up the present as it traveled and yet, paradoxically, still lives. All that’s left of Capote is Phillip Seymour-Hoffman.

And though On the Road’s maker was a famed outsider, he knew how to plug himself by appearing on programs such The Steve Allen Show (possibly while drunk or high) and inviting viewers to join the trip, man. Kerouac was a loner in lots of way, but one who believed in picking up hitch-hikers.

—Walter