Don't You Know Who I Am?

Fifty years ago, Emmett Till was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Forty-one years ago, three civil rights workers, one of them black, were murdered while attempting to register blacks to vote in Mississippi.

Last week, Oprah Winfrey couldn't get into Hermes in Paris.

They're really comparable, aren't they? To hear Winfrey's people tell it, you would think that Winfrey's inability to get into a fancy Paris shop would rank up there with Rosa Parks's refusal to move from the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama as an example of a brave black woman being discriminated against on the basis of her race.

Winfrey has yet to comment publicly on the controversy, so let's discuss what we do know to be factual.

Oprah went to Hermes. That is a fact. She was not allowed to enter. That is another fact. Just about everything else about this story is conjecture. The store insists that they were closed for a public relations meeting, but Winfrey's friend Gayle King (from whom most of the racial spin on this story derives), claims otherwise. "People were in there and they were shopping," she has stated.

Now, given that the store has claimed that they were closed for a public relations meeting, it is just barely possible that those people whom King assumed were "shopping" were in fact preparing the store for that meeting. Or the store could have been closed, and the people inside were last-minute stragglers in the process of being hustled out the door. It's conjecture, but it's plausible conjecture. Hermes could have been applying the same rules to Winfrey that they would have applied to you or me. I know that if I show up at my local supermarket as they're getting ready to close for the night, there may still be people in there, but that doesn't mean I can get inside: they're closed.

It is possible (and I admit that, barring some more facts, this is speculation on my part) that this story has less to do with race than it does with celebrity, and the perceived entitlements of celebrity. Oprah Winfrey has been a major celebrity for twenty years now. People have been sucking her ass for so long I'm amazed that she still has a colon. And yet, when this mega-wealthy woman wants to do some spur-of-the-moment shopping in Paris, the store tells her that it's closed.

Now when rich and famous people don't get what they want, there's a statement they invariably make to the person standing in their way, and it's always delivered in a petulant tone of voice: "Don't you know who I am?" The implication is that, because the person involved is a celebrity, they are entitled to special treatment. The fact is, that if you or I were to go to Hermes after hours and try to gain admittance, we wouldn't get in. Period. Should Winfrey be treated any differently just because she's rich and famous?

Granted, this is all conjecture, and it's still conceivable that Winfrey was discriminated against because of her race. But I think the reverse is slightly more plausible, and that Winfrey might be miffed because, for the first time in two decades, she was being treated just like everybody else.


Tom Moran

Oedipus Wrecks

What are we doing in Iraq? Do we have any perspective on how we got into this mess? On why, almost two and a half years after we went in, we've spent all this time, money and blood to get rid of a dictator who was not a threat to us, creating nothing but anarchy and chaos in the process?

Some people blame what they consider to be the evil neoconservatives in the West Wing. They're the ones, some believe, who wanted war in Iraq even before Bush was inaugurated, and the minute they got a like-minded president in the Oval Office they pushed and prodded him until he finally caved in and did their bidding. In this scenario, Bush is merely the puppet, and the neocons are the puppet masters, secretly pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Some people on the left actually believe this scenario (some on the right do as well), but I don't think it's true.

Frankly, I think the truth is sadder and more pathetic.

I think this is solely George W. Bush's war. He wanted it and went after it from the day he was sworn into office. He wanted to find a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and he wasn't going to stop until he did it – and he didn't care if he had to lie to the American people to do it. He knew it didn't matter. He knew that, so long as the outcome was successful, no one would care about how it began. So he went ahead, confident of victory.

But why? Why spend so much time and effort lying to get into a war? People don't usually do things unless they are strongly motivated to do so. What was Bush's motivation for war? What was in it for him?

The answer is both simple and sad. Americans have fought many wars over the past two and a quarter centuries. Some of these wars have been necessary, and some have been unnecessary. All have been costly in lives and human suffering. But this war has been unique, because this has been the first Freudian war in our nation's history.

All his life George W. Bush has labored in the shadow of his father, and has suffered by comparison. Bush the elder was a war hero. Bush the younger blew off his last year of military service. Bush the elder went to Texas and made his fortune. Bush the younger tried to emulate his father's business success and failed miserably, losing millions of dollars of other people's money and having to be bailed out time and again by his father's friends. Bush the elder made friends and compiled an impressive resume. Bush the younger was at the age of forty a drunk and a failure.

It must have galled him. He couldn't even get elected president on his own – he had to have the Supreme Court bend the rules, violate the Constitution and sneak him in the back door of the White House by default. But once he was sworn in, he must have thought that this was finally his chance to prove that he was a bigger man than his father. He would show the world who the real man was. The son who once drunkenly threatened his father to a fistfight would now prove that he was the man his father wasn't by doing the one thing his father was unable to accomplish – put Saddam Hussein behind bars.

Could anything be more pathetic? To send young men and women to fight and die in a war under false pretenses just to prove you're more macho than your dad? But I believe that's just what George W. Bush has done – and 1,700 Americans are dead because of it.

And if that isn't an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.

Tom Moran

[Note, 7/27: I wrote this post before reading the book "Bush on the Couch," which makes some of the same points as I do here, but at far greater length. I highly recommend it, along with Peter Singer's "The President of Good and Evil," if you want to find out about the psyche of the man currently occupying the Oval Office.]

Marry in Haste...

It was announced today that Tom Cruise has proposed to Katie Holmes in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower. They have known each other exactly seven weeks.

For some reason this reminds me of a quote from George Bernard Shaw. It's in his 1893 play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession":

"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."

That is, of course, assuming that it's not just a publicity stunt.

There have to be easier ways of getting converts to Scientology...

Tom Moran

Mission Not Accomplished

I know what you think the big news of yesterday was, but you're mistaken. Trust me.

Yesterday's big news had nothing to do whether justice was or was not done in a courtroom in Santa Maria, California. It had nothing to do with child molestation or with self-proclaimed kings of pop. The real story yesterday was a series of statements that you didn't hear made by military officers of whom you've probably never heard. But those statements are enormously revealing, and you should know about them, and think about what they mean.

First was a statement by Brigadier General Donald Alston, who is the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. And what did he say? What was the statement that was so important that it stands comparison to Michael Jackson beating the rap on molesting kids?

This is what he said: "I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations."

The top commander in Iraq, George W. Casey, agreed, referring to what he calls "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea," that idea being (according to Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder, which is where I got this report) that if you press the insurgency in one place, it will just pop up in another. As Lieutenant Colonel Frederick P. Wellman puts it, "We can't kill them all. When I kill one [insurgent], I create three."

So what do we conclude from this? What is the logical and pretty much inescapable conclusion to be drawn from these statements?

Very simple. The war is over in Iraq. And it looks like we've lost. We can't defeat this insurgency by military means. The U.S. military is dealing with a situation that is eerily reminiscent of Mickey Mouse's dilemma in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" episode from "Fantasia": no matter how many brooms he chops up, more will appear to take the place of the ones that have been destroyed. We have created an insurgency that has metastasized far beyond our ability to control it – if we were ever able to do so. The fact is that we can fight this insurgency for the next ten years and we will not win. And it's time to admit it.

The late Colonel David Hackworth (whom I knew when we both worked at Newsweek), wrote a piece once where he talked about the record of the United States in fighting guerrilla wars, and pointed out that we've yet to win one. And as no less a conservative than Pat Buchanan points out in his recent book "Where the Right Went Wrong," insurgencies (by people who are always referred to as "terrorists" by those fighting them) tend to be successful. It would seem that Iraq is to the world of early 21st Century Arab fundamentalism what Spain was to the leftists of the late 1930s – the place to go to fight the good fight. They have an inexhaustible supply of wannabe suicide bombers – and what do we have? A military force that is overextended, underpaid, and greatly outnumbered.

This war is over. And we've lost it. The commanders on the ground have as much as acknowledged it. How long do you think it will take and how many more American lives will be lost before this administration finally sees what's right in front of their face?

Tom Moran

Debt Relief Begins at Home

The British and the US government have reached an agreement to forgive an estimated $16.7 billion in debt that African nations owe to western democracies. While I agree that this is a laudable goal, one can't help but notice that, at least in the case of the American government, this philanthropic effort also reeks of hypocrisy.

Isn't this the same Bush administration that backed a bill in Congress – a bill that the financial services lobby pretty much wrote themselves – that made it harder for its own citizens to declare bankruptcy? Aren't millions of Americans going to be prevented from getting relief from their own debt by this legislation? Aren't these debtors, many of whom go into debt in the wake of medical emergencies that leave them with exorbitant bills they have no way of paying, going to be prevented from making the same kind of fresh start that this same administration finds to be so desirable in the case of African countries?

That wouldn't be a wee bit hypocritical, would it? And yet I don't see Bush and the Republican Congress making any kind of effort towards debt forgiveness for Americans. But then, we just live here and pay taxes, so I guess we don't count. African countries get debt relief, while credit card companies are allowed to extract their pound of flesh from impoverished Americans in order to maximize their profits.

Doesn't charity begin at home?

Tom Moran

Tom Cruise in Love

Let's say you had a friend. And that friend started acting, well, a little peculiar. He's a middle-aged guy who all of a sudden is wearing black-leather jackets, riding motorcycles and professing his undying love for a woman half his age. What would you tell this guy?

I know what I'd tell him. "Dude, you're not in love – you're just having a classic mid-life crisis."

Is that what's up with Tom Cruise? Does that explain his bizarre, couch-jumping behavior on "The Oprah Winfrey Show"? Is that why you can't hit the remote on your TV without coming across footage of Cruise sucking face in the middle of the street? Is this just the mid-life crisis of an actor in his forties who realizes that all the money and all the fame in the world can't keep him from aging? That no matter how carefully he combs his hair forward in an increasingly Trump-esque manner the signs of age are becoming increasingly apparent? That's he's not as young or as cute as he used to be? That the days of "Risky Business" are really over?

Maybe not. Maybe it's the real thing. Maybe Tom Cruise has at long last found true love with Katie Holmes, who is no doubt a very fetching young lady. Of course, it is true that they both have new movies coming out in the next couple of weeks (isn't it convenient that they should fall madly in love with each other when they both have films to promote?), and I suppose if one were to be churlish and cynical and utterly unromantic one could assume that this was all a publicity stunt to achieve synergistic publicity for both their upcoming movies.

But we're not cynical, are we? We don't think that either of these two crazy kids might be doing this merely for the sake of publicity, do we? That making out in public might not just be for the sake of making out like a bandit at the box office? That would be a cynical way of looking at it – and God knows we're not cynics.

That's why I prefer to think of this as Tom Cruise's mid-life crisis. And I'm sure that, in time, he'll get over it. Possibly with the help of a good psychiatrist.

Tom Moran

If You Want Something Done Right...

Yesterday was not a good day for New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He did not get the votes to approve the funding for the proposed New York Jets football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, the stadium that was the centerpiece of his plan to lure the Olympics here in 2012, and was supposed to be key to his reelection campaign. Now it looks like the stadium (which would have required $300 million in taxpayer dollars) will not be built, and the dream of New York hosting the Olympics is thought to be doomed.

Of course, there is the fact that no one except Bloomberg really wanted the Olympics coming to New York in the first place, and many people, including myself, believed that it was only a ploy to help the mayor get reelected. Don't we have enough obnoxious tourists flooding Manhattan already? As it is, you can barely walk the streets of midtown without being trampled by thousands of schmucks with digital cameras, all of them about to attend their very first Broadway show (where, no doubt, their cell phones will ring incessantly throughout the performance – ain't tourists grand?). Hosting the Olympics would have been even more of a pain in the ass than the Republican National Convention was last summer. Who needs it? Certainly not the people who live in this city.

But there is a way around the problem, if the mayor is willing to be a little bit creative. A way to salvage his damaged Olympic dream, bring the Jets back within the confines of the five boroughs, and all without the taxpayers having to shell out a single dime. You like it already, don't you?

Here's my plan: why doesn't the mayor cough up the $300 million to fund the stadium himself? After all, he's a billionaire, it's not like he doesn't have the money. He bought his way into Gracie Mansion, what's a few more million? This way he could avoid having to put it to a vote, and he could probably write it off on his income taxes as a charitable donation.

So how about it, Mister Mayor? Why not put your money where your mouth is? If you want this stadium built so bad, there's one simple way to make it happen: pay for it yourself. After all, better you than the taxpayers, who have better things to do with their money than to give a football team a free ride at the public's expense.

Tom Moran

Gagging on "Deep Throat"

Don't you love the sight of all these aging veterans of the Nixon administration trashing Mark Felt, the nonagenarian former FBI agent who, as we found out this week, was the anonymous source for the Washington Post known as "Deep Throat"? Bernard Barker, G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan and Charles Colson all laid into Felt on television. The minute he was named in the press they couldn't wait to call this 91-year-old man a traitor and a criminal for talking to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post about the Watergate scandal.

Now, considering that the majority of these men went to prison for their activities during this period (Buchanan being the lucky exception), you might think that this is just a case of a number of rusty old pots calling the elderly kettle black. But do they have a point? Did Felt, as Colson suggested, have other options besides leaking to the press? Was he a traitor?

Well, I suppose that he could have gone to the Attorney General, the highest law enforcement official in the land, except for the fact that John Mitchell was personally involved in the break-in and the cover-up and later went to prison for it. Not a good idea.

He could have gone to the White House directly, but at that point you couldn't have swung a cat in the West Wing without hitting someone en route to the slammer. Many of the men in the president's inner circle (Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Dean, to name just three) ended up getting "three hots and a cot" for a stretch in a federal penitentiary. No use going to the White House, either.

I suppose he could have gone to his boss at the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, but since Gray was in the process of chucking sensitive files into the Potomac River, I kinda doubt he would have been inclined to help see that justice was done. He was letting the White House dictate the terms of the investigation. So forget about going to the FBI.

What options did Mark Felt have? Basically two: he could sit on his hands and do nothing, and let a criminal administration get away with committing the kind of offenses that he was being paid to stop, or he could see to it that, one way or another, the criminals were exposed so that justice could be done. Towards that end he helped steer Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post in the right direction, and their investigative reporting, as well as the investigations of the U.S. Congress, helped drive a corrupt president from office.

Does this make Mark Felt a hero? I tend to think not, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that my opinion is pretty much in line with that of Henry Kissinger (now that's a sentence I never thought I'd write!). Heroes don't hide behind anonymity for three decades before declaring themselves when they have one foot in the grave. For Felt to have been genuinely heroic he should have come out and admitted his actions long ago, especially since those actions were, I believe, fundamentally moral and in accord with the best traditions of this country. He didn't do what he did for glory or fame or money. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do, and he should have said exactly that decades ago.

So I don't believe that he's a hero. But neither is he a traitor, no matter what the former jailbirds of the Nixon Administration, fuming at Felt's last-minute brush with notoriety, might think.

Tom Moran