The Dish

My version of the real Reagan is, of course, alarmingly close to Phil Hartman’s classic SNL skit, in which the Gipper puts on a doddering-old-fool act and then switches into Russian the minute the door is closed. Here’s an audio link, sent by a reader. Enjoy.

MORE ON GIMME CAPS: An emailer adds some detail to fashion anthropology:

Certainly many people wore the foam and the mesh, but people seem to be confusing how it made its way into popular culture (MTV and MTV2 especially). The foam and mesh cap entered popular culture via San Francisco indie rock bands with origins in the central valley. Many of the people in the Central Valley are the descendants of the “Okies” and “Arkies” who fled to California during the depression, and they dominate cultural life in the Central Valley (certainly among the White population). The band Joaquina (name of a small town in the central valley) even had a 1998 album called “the Foam and the Mesh.” The most popular of these bands is named “Grandaddy” and they are from Modesto, CA. Most of the bands moved from the central valley into the Bay area in the mid 1990s in the wake of Pavement’s (from Stockton) fame. They dominate the Bay area music scene now, and Grandaddy is very popular in England. The hipsters picked up on it. Check out SF’s Future Farmer Records. Note the rocket tractor at http://www.futurefarmer.com. There is even a minor trend to name one’s band after small towns in the Central Valley (see Earlimart).

Do my readers know everything? Except what Valerie Plame’s actual job was/is.

The AP makes sure it doesn’t actually accuse anyone of, er, you know, anti-Semitism or anything. Just because vandals spray-painted anti-Jewish slogans on Rosh-Hashanah, well, it could be anything, you know … Where does the AP think it’s publishing? In France?

THE CASE OF CHRIS HEDGES: Chris Hedges is the New York Times reporter who has claimed to document appalling human rights abuses commtted by the Israeli military, most famously in a magical-realist piece he wrote for Harpers. A critic parses all the various permutations of Hedges’ story, as it was written, discussed and explained by the reporter. There are, let’s say, some discrepancies.

SO, JONAH …: How about a date?

At the NYT, David Brooks writes about Paul Krugman.

Well, I sat down yesterday afternoon and tried – no, really tried – to understand what this whole Wilson-Plame “scandal” is about. Here’s my first stab: Joseph Wilson, for some reason, was picked to go investigate claims that Saddam had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. He came back and said – he didn’t write anything down, apparently – that there was no evidence that such a transaction had occurred. When the Bush administration cited British sources for uranium from Africa (not specifically Niger), Wilson got his panties in a twist and wrote an op-ed for the NYT accusing the Bushies of distorting intelligence to wage war. Subsequently, somebody in the government – either at the White House or elsewhere – was talking on the phone to Robert Novak, anti-war columnist, and told him that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative. Novak’s disclosure set Wilson off again, and he accused the administration of trying to wreck his wife’s career out of spite at his dissent, and subsequently blamed Karl Rove personally. A few lefty writers made something of this on the web. Then it died down. Then over the weekend, news broke that George Tenet was ticked off about the affair and an “administration official” (CIA?) told the Washington Post that two government sources had actually cold-called six hacks and “outed” Wilson’s wife around the same time as Novak’s conversation. Then last night, Novak said that Plame wasn’t an undercover CIA agent after all; and that no-one in the government had tried to call him with that information. The Post, in contrast, has reported baldly that Plame “is a case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction.” That’s about it. Okay, so there are nuances that I’ve missed, but that’s the best I could do.

WHAT IS HER JOB?: So, first off, is Plame or is she not an under-cover CIA agent? The original “leaker,” Robert Novak, says no. The Post says yes. And why would CIA complain if it weren’t true? Surely this is findoutable. If she is not undercover, someone at the CIA can easily provide her job description and clear all this up. If she is undercover, then we really do need to know who tried to “out” her to the six journalists. One possibility is that she once was undercover and now no longer is – which still makes the outing illegal but less dangerous, less vindictive and more baffling. Novak, meanwhile, has blown a hole through his part of the story by saying last night that

“Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson’s report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson’s involvement in the mission for her husband – he is a former Clinton administration official – they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives.”

So, according to Novak, there really isn’t a story here. It seems to me that until we know exactly what Plame’s job is, there’s not much point in speculating further. If she’s just an analyst and this is widely known, then the White House calls are slimy (and still baffling to me) but not worthy of major investigation. (I have a hunch she is no longer under-cover and now simply consults.)

ONE MORE THING: If none of the six journalists published Plame’s name and we do not know the context in which her name was raised, and Novak denies it, how do we know at all that this was an effort to punish Wilson and/or Plame? Do we believe the “revenge” motive provided by the government source over the weekend – or are his motives merely inter-agency in-fighting? In Novak’s column, there’s no direct negative slant on Plame at all. And there’s no source provided for her identity. Here’s the money quote:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.

Notice that Novak doesn’t write that the two SAO’s told him about Plame’s identity. They just indicated that it was her suggestion that Wilson be used. The CIA subsequently asked him to withhold her name. Now if she knows her stuff, and isn’t undercover, why is this damning at all? Beats me. Or are they trying a weak argument that he’s an incompetent or worse who got the assignment for nepotistic reasons? Who knows? I have many more questions than answers. And since I’m not part of the Krugmanian Bush-Is-Hitler/Nixon/Saddam crowd, I’ll leave the hyper-ventilating to Josh Marshall until we know more. (Useful summary: The Rant.)

Don’t believe the New York Times. My take on Reagan’s extraordinary letters, posted opposite.

“WACKERS”: The urbanites parodying white-trash couture are nothing new. As one correspondent opines:

First of all, every child of the boondocks knows it’s a ‘gimme cap’, not a ‘trucker hat’. They were free gifts from seed corn companies and implement dealers, not $60 accessories from the Von Dutch boutique. Second, although it may come as some shock to the uberhipsteroids of Williamsburg, college kids in Iowa were wearing them as purely ironic fashion statements TWENTY YEARS AGO. Interesting to see that trends eventually make it to the hinterlands of Brooklyn.

Here’s a good New York Press piece on the phenom that appeared almost a year before the NYT.

THE WEST AND ISLAM: At last, an example of resistance to murderous cultural misogyny in the West.

THE REAL AMERICA: A Brit realizes the foolishness of stereotypes.

“$87 billion for Iraq for 24 million people in a middle-income country filled with oil and $1 billion – that’s 1/87th of that – for 600 million impoverished and dying people in Africa. What kind of foreign policy is that? It is racist – of course it is … I’ve been at the White House for three years saying ‘How are you letting millions of people die – thousands every day – and you’re giving 1/400th of what you’re doing for Iraq for the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. This is so shocking for us as a country that we can’t have any balance at all. And then we’re dumping this money down the drain. But why? Of course, fundamentally why is we want that oil under the sand. That’s fundamentally why. We’re not going to get it anyway. But they want to privatize it no doubt because, where’s the first couple of billion going no doubt? Halliburton and Bechtel. Let’s have a Congressional investigation of that, to start. Let’s have a Congressional investigation of the Saudi-Bush family linkages which go back 20 years — which have enriched this president, enriched his father, enriched their family, enriched their friends. And brought us into this so-called special relationship with a country that truly was involved in the September 11 attack and we don’t hear anything about that. So let’s have an investigation of that. And if we get out of Iraq, then we’ll have tens of billions of dollars not for Bechtel and Halliburton, but we’ll have tens of billions of dollars for our needs and we’ll have the billions of dollars for Africa.” – Jeffrey Sachs, formerly sane Columbia University professor, joining the Krugman wing of the Democrats, at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting on Iraq last Friday (transcribed by a reader from C-SPAN).

SO WHAT DOES THE FMA SAY? Ramesh Ponnuru, like other intellectually honest souls, is having a hard time understanding the proposed religious right amendment to the constitution, barring any benefits to gay couples. At first he thought my worries about the text were “ridiculous.” Now he sees a little of what I’m getting at. His latest interpretation is as follows:

The FMA does, however, bar governmental benefits to unmarried persons premised on a sexual relationship between (or among) them. It would not bar legislatively enacted civil unions that, say, opened various benefits to any two people living together–whether they were two brothers, two guys who sleep together, widows who had set up house, or whatever. It would bar civil unions that were limited to gay couples.

I’m not sure how he gleans this from the text which is as follows:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

That seems pretty broad to me. Where does he get the gays-only clause? I think they need to be more specific and a lot clearer. My suggestion:

Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any homosexual couples for whatever reason.

What would be wrong with that? It’s clear, at least. Why would the editors of National Review disagree? They oppose any benefits to gay couples whatever.

I haven’t posted on this subject yet because Karl Rove has told me not to. When he gets back to me and tells me the party line, I’ll write something. Seriously, I have two questions that I don’t fully understand the answer to. What was the motive of the two “administration officials” who allegedly leaked the name of Wilson’s wife? The Washington Post suggests revenge for the trouble Wilson caused Bush. But how is this revenge? Were they hoping to get her killed? That strikes me as far-fetched. Or fired? Why would leaking her name lead to her firing? But was she actually under-cover anyway? And wouldn’t Wilson’s uxorial connections with the CIA actually buttress his credibility, rather than undermine it? Or am I missing something? My other question is: who is the White House official telling the Washington Post these things? Since the information is damning, what’s his/her motive? To get the damaging stuff out there soon? To pre-empt an independent investigation? Hmmm. Bottom line: if some idiot or crook at the White House did this for petty reasons, he/she should be fired and be subject to prosecution. But the details are so murky and so anonymous at this point that I don’t think I can say anything more coherent than that. As with the Gilligan-Kelly affair, what we know at the beginning may be unrelated to the full scope of what we find out by the end. But I’m not ignoring it. Oh, hold on … Karl’s on the line …

Finally a country of which Rick Santorum would approve: Indonesia, where they’re contemplating making oral sex illegal.

Michael Barone gets it right, as usual.

“Maybe I am just getting older and don’t get it or it could be the fact that I grew up in a small Midwestern burg and understand how hopeless my friends and family are who stayed there. Either way these people are jerk-offs. Two things came to mind when I read this. The first is these people would get their asses kicked if they threw a half-full can of beer at someone at a party. Not just because of the action, but because it is a waste of beer. Secondly, these “hipsters” would not last five minutes in any of the number of small towns in this country where this kind of culture really thrives. Any real goat roper who grew up drinking Pabst will tell you it is skunk beer and small town people know this. The only way to make it better is to add salt to it, I mean how wrong is that? My point is rural Americans don’t need condescending pricks in New York to tell them they are cool. We already knew it and embraced it years ago.”