The Dish

“If Tina Brown is following Maureen Dowd, does that make her quasi-MoDo?”

POSEUR ALERT: “Like Nepalese religious shrines tendered on cow dung, the blues disc is an ‘opportunity for devotion.’ In the three economies in which it occurs, of the market, of society, and of the self, a disc collection such as James McKune’s or Harry Smith’s becomes a kind of counter-capital, a harvest of illth, like Dickens’s dustman converting what is dispersed, discarded, ruined, and despised to what is recovered, concentrated, and renewed, rendering it at once rare and precious, scandalous and subversive. In the vertical archeology of the social body, it is an edifice of the repressed, making one’s own despised or ruined condition available for contemplation and turning it, by virtue of our irrepressible sociality, into a source of cultural power. ‘Whatever we worship we make sacred.'” – an abstract of an academic paper on blues recordings.

A cartoon says it best.

THE CASE FOR SURRENDER: An American Prospect piece argues that Blair should avoid war because it could lead to terrorist reprisals. Good to see simple fear and cowardice being profferred as a war strategy.

“If, as is looking increasingly likely, Blair loses office over this war, it won’t be because he’s been martyred by a nation of spineless appeasers, or for that matter because we’ve seen too many cartoons showing poodles (wearing a lieutenant’s pips) shovelling elephant shit (the elephant guided by a giant wearing spurs and a cowboy hat). It’ll be because, for years now, he has allowed his spokespeople to tell any lies that, media-wise, seemed appropriate, while assuming that, because he always believes what he is saying at the time, the populace will believe him when he assures them he is sincere. He’s a talented, likeable and quite interesting politician: and a study in what might have happened if Clinton had been granted his deepest wish, and been President during challenging times.” – more insight and doggerel on the Letters Page.

THE DEMS AND GAYS: The Democratic Senators are quite happy to see a rampant homophobe become a judge, while filibustering Pickering. Check out Stephen Miller’s column on the strange priorities of the Democrats:

The lesson: if you are conservative but not anti-gay, look for the Democrats to oppose you with everything they’ve got. But if you’re anti-gay but not otherwise objectionable, that’s just dandy. I guess the Democrats figure no matter what they do, gay liberals will keep supporting them. And, sadly, they’re probably right.

It was a year ago today that the Islamofascists murdered him in cold blood because he was a Jew. The Wiesenthal Center is organizing a small tribute. A better tribute is to continue the war against the forces that murdered him. And, yes, that does mean the terrorist-sponsoring mafia now ruling Iraq.

COULD THE “PEACE” DEMOS PROVOKE WAR? They might if Saddam interprets his current position as unassailable and so forces a sternly negative report from Hans Blix. This drama has had so many twists so far, we’d be foolish to rule out another one.

THE UGLY CONSERVATIVE: A worthwhile piece dissecting the extreme vulgarity and political hate-mongering spewed by right-wing radio host, Michael Savage.

ANOTHER BEEB QUOTE: This time from the BBC’s World Affairs Correspondent, David Loyn: “”If America was engaged in the rest of the world rather than, frankly, wanting to bomb it and, as Yasmine says, take its resources…” No wonder the Economist this week simply categorized the BBC as an anti-war organization, motivated by simple anti-Americanism.

AFTER “WEASELS”: A British tabloid goes for another Chirac analogy.

It’s the most rickety crutch for a female columnist with nothing to say, but that hasn’t stopped both Maureen Dowd and now Tina Brown from throwing baldly sexist remarks at the Bush administration. MoDo recently went on a rant about the “locker-room” taunts and high testosterone in the White House. Brown now gives us this brilliant insight:

Is it just the residue of fashion week that makes me wish there were more, or should I say any, gay men in the Bush Administration? At The Sunday Times in the Seventies one top editor used to shake his head when the paper became too humourlessly high-testosterone and say that what it needed that week was ‘more pooftah power’. In lieu of outright womanhood – except for Condoleezza Rice, who crosses the gender barriers by becoming the most zealous enabler – perhaps an injection of androgyny could be brought to bear on diplomatic relations in this moment of crisis. The Bush crowd’s only management style, like that of many who subscribe to the outmoded cult of America’s Toughest Bosses, is to unzip and thwack it on the table.

Ignore the homophobic stereotypes. (Why is it “gay” to be lacking in testosterone? Or androgynous? Or soft on dictators?) Imagine if a male writer used similarly sexist language to describe, say, Tina Brown’s administration at the New Yorker. Imagine sentences like this: “Wouldn’t it be better if there had been more men at the New Yorker in the ’90s? And I don’t mean Tina’s neutered gay male flunkies. Brown’s flitty attention span, bouts of editorial PMS, hysterical responses to criticism and general whorishness toward publicists and celebrities made for a very menstrual management style.” It would never be written. It should never be written. It’s sexist, dumb and almost meaningless. But in all those respects, it’s indistinguishable from Tina’s latest column.

More evidence that Blix is spitting against a Nor-easter. The “interviews” promised by Saddam haven’t happened. Only three out of thirty have occurred and all those were Saddam-picked scientists with tape-recording of the proceedings.

Tom Friedman seems to think so. I wish I thought that the visceral hostility of Chirac and Schroder were a function of George Bush’s bad diplomacy. But I fear their positions would be the same whatever president was in power, if he were trying to accomplish the magnitude of what Bush is aiming for in the war on terror. Bush’s rapport with Blair, an ideological opponent, and his relationship with Putin suggests no lack of diplomatic grace in the White House. And does Friedman think Colin Powell’s ceaseless efforts around the globe were window-dressing? In truth, the positions of France and Germany have as much to do with their own precarious positions within Europe as they do with the policies of the United States. For a while now, I have harped on the importance of EU politics for American foreign policy – and largely been ignored. It seemed so boring. It may seem less boring now. There is a huge struggle going on in Europe between those who want to forge an anti-American socialist super-state and those who want to unite Europe around principles of nation-states, a trans-Atlantic bond and free trade. Imagine in the current crisis if Britain’s foreign policy were subservient to Brussels and you get an idea of the stakes.

EUROPE’S CHANCE: Until now, Britain has been waging a lonely and largely reactive campaign against the centralizers and dirigistes. But as the EU has enlarged since the end of the Soviet bloc, and as the central euro-area continues to be bested by the more dynamic economies on the periphery, Britain stands a chance of reshaping Europe along far more pro-American and classically liberal lines. Chirac and Schroder must now realize that this war, if successful, could bolster Blair further in Europe and isolate them for a long time within their own pet institution. Hence Chirac’s loss of temper at the East Europeans. Hence Schroder’s accelerating political collapse at home. Great things are afoot. This war might not only change the Middle East in ways conducive to liberal democratic institutions. It might do the same for Europe.

Read this hilarious and touching obit of famous British eccentric Lady Bindy Lambton, survivor of enormous feet, go-karting crashes and cocaine.

Thanks for the tidal wave of BBC snippets. I’m even more struck by the anti-anti-Saddam slant. Here’s a recent one, to give you a flavor: a piece posing as journalism focussing on a handful of liberal churches in the U.S. supporting a non-violent removal of Saddam. How would such a removal be accomplished? By encouraging civil disobedience among Iraqis. Here’s the piece. Try not to laugh or cry. Not a skeptical note in it. As a reader noted, the last time the West urged a similar mass protest against Saddam – with leaflet drops in March 1991 – the dictator’s response was to massacre 20,000 Kurds in the North and between 30,000 and 60,000 Shi’ah in the South within a month. For balance, the outside “expert” who gives his take on the idea is a leading former member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (which, of course, doesn’t want to disarm Saddam). It’s a classic Beeb piece – not really news, utterly slanted, with a patina of easily-debunked objectivity.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION II: Check out this piece of “vox populi” boilerplate from the BBC, going around the world asking people what they think about the Iraqi situation. Barely a single voice in favor of using force to disarm or depose Saddam. No surprise there. But more objectionable are the voices of people in Iraq, presented with no context in exactly the same format as interviews in Paris and London and Washington. As if there weren’t a gun pointed at the back of their head. Yesterday, Paul Krugman blamed the Fox News Network, with an audience in the hundreds of thousands, for slanting America’s views in favor of war. It was the only way he could understand the difference in public opinion between the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, the BBC, with a quarter of a billion worldwide listeners and viewers, and a semi-monopoly of television and radio in Britain, churns out anti-American propaganda by the truckload. Hmmm.

Check out this BBC interview with Tony Blair on Newsnight, hosted by Jeremy Paxman. Now, Paxman is a notoriously rude and offensive interviewer in what is a ruder and more offensive political-media culture in Britain. But this grilling of Blair took things to a new level. Look at this exchange:

TONY BLAIR: Well I can assure you I’ve said every time I’m asked about this, the [sanctions] have contained [Saddam] up to a point and the fact is the sanctions regime was beginning to crumble, it’s why … we had a whole series of negotiations about tightening the sanctions regime but the truth is the inspectors were put out of Iraq so –
JEREMY PAXMAN: They were not put out of Iraq, Prime Minister, that is just not true. The weapons inspectors left Iraq after being told by the American government that bombs will be dropped on the country.
TONY BLAIR: I’m sorry, that is simply not right. What happened is that the inspectors told us that they were unable to carry out their work, they couldn’t do their work because they weren’t being allowed access to the sites. They detailed that in the reports to the Security Council. On that basis, we said they should come out because they couldn’t do their job properly.
JEREMY PAXMAN: That wasn’t what you said, you said they were thrown out of Iraq –
TONY BLAIR: Well they were effectively because they couldn’t do the work they were supposed to do
JEREMY PAXMAN: No, effectively they were not thrown out of Iraq, they withdrew.
TONY BLAIR: No I’m sorry Jeremy, I’m not allowing you to get away with that, that is completely wrong. Let me just explain to you what happened.
JEREMY PAXMAN: You’ve just said the decision was taken by the inspectors to leave the country. They were therefore not thrown out.
TONY BLAIR: They were effectively thrown out for the reason that I will give you.

Note the complete contempt for Blair. Note the silly semantics treated as if it were a real point. Not the insufferable pomposity of Paxman. And the audience was drawn entirely from people opposed to the Blair policy. Not a single affirmative question or sympathetic comment was allowed. Fair and balanced. That’s our Beeb.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION IV: Some more recent quotes from the BBC’s reporters and correspondents. From Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent, at a Hamas rally – yes, a Hamas rally – in 2001: “Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.” The BBC still won’t characterize Hamas as a terrorist group. From John Simpson, World Affairs editor, the man who claimed to have liberated Kabul: George W. Bush is a “glovepuppet of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” Simpson also said of Americans he met in New York after 9/11: “Thank God I don’t have to broadcast to them.” There is, of course, one extraordinary exception to the BBC’s slide toward leftist agitprop. And that’s Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, a broadcast I grew up on and from which I learned my first lessons about America. Decades later, Cooke is still invaluable.