Quote of the Day

I never thought I'd be quoting Pat Buchanan in here. And approvingly...

"Bismarck called pre-emptive war committing suicide out of fear of death – not a bad description of what we did in invading Iraq."

Tom Moran

Airbrushing the Past

Imagine a world where Ronald Reagan was never a Democrat. Where F.D.R. never had polio. Where John Kerry never served in Vietnam or John McCain was never taken prisoner. Sound far-fetched? Maybe in real life, but in film anything is possible -- including rewriting the past.

I had noticed a wire item a while back on a really idiotic piece of censorship happening in England, and thought about posting a blog item about it. But when push came to shove I didn't, mainly because it was happening in England and I consider this to be a blog about America.

But John Patterson has an interesting piece in Friday's Guardian about it so I thought I'd discuss the issue in terms of his piece and see where we agree and disagree, because it's worth having a debate about.

"I see Tom and Jerry are undermining the safety and morals of our children once again," he begins. "It used to be violence; now it's cigarette smoking that's got the cat and mouse's corporate overseers all in a lather. One complaint to Ofcom by a single viewer, and Time Warner, maddeningly, is all too happy to revisit its classic cartoon archive and airbrush out anything that makes smoking look cool."

So far we're in agreement. It's hard not to be. The actions of Time Warner [full disclosure: my former bosses] are pretty indefensible. One person complains and they vandalize some of the best cartoons to come out of America? This is ridiculous, and the fact that it's only in England that this is happening, and not America (yet) doesn't make it any better.

Patterson discusses the smoking issue at some length, then moves on:

"I remember about 25 years ago seeing a fascinating compendium of racist, sexist and generally phobic cartoons from the 1930s and 40s, featuring such classic animated figures as Betty Boop (her clothes just kept falling off!), Bugs Bunny and other 'toons from Disney and Warner Bros. Blacks were lampooned as pimps, loafers and idiots in regrettable shorts such as Snow White am de Sebben Dwarbes. The Japanese took a racist pasting - bucktoothed, slant-eyed, fanatical, all that - in half a dozen justly forgotten flag-wavers of the second world war, and women generally got the misogynistic end of the animator's pencil. But how are we served by the suppression of these materials? Sure, they're grotesque and offensive, but they remain a solid index of broadly acceptable social attitudes prevailing at the time they were made, and, as such, they should never be erased. There was plenty that wasn't so great about the so-called Greatest Generation."

I think Patterson must have seen this in New York, because this sounds suspiciously like the "Sex, Violence & Racism in Cartoons" program that they used to show at midnight at the (sadly, now defunct) 8th Street Playhouse in the early 1980s. Possibly because of a faulty memory and the fact that he saw these films so long ago, he's a little inaccurate factually. The title of the cartoon is "Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs," and far from being "regrettable" it's universally considered by animation enthusiasts one of the greatest cartoon shorts ever made. If you don't believe me you can see for yourself -- in spite of being one of the "Censored 11" cartoons that Time Warner refuses to put out on DVD or play on cable, bootleg copies of it are available on both Google Video and You Tube. I would also respectfully disagree with people who call "Coal Black" racist. All you need to do is compare it to the legitimately racist Warners cartoons of the same period (such as "All This and Rabbit Stew" -- which you can also find on You Tube) to see the difference. "All This and Rabbit Stew" plays its stereotypes straight -- "Coal Black" pushes racial stereotypes to an extreme to point up their inherent absurdity. It does what the TV show "In Living Color" did forty years later, and it does so with the enthusiastic participation of an all-black cast, none of whom, as far as I know, complained about the content of the cartoon.

But then, people were far less touchy in those days.

As far as the racist portrayals of the Japanese in cartoons like "Tokyo Jokio" (also on You Tube), I remember pointing out to my father that the portrayal of the Japanese in some Warner Bros. cartoons of the era was incredibly racist. He just gave me a look that I'll never forget and said, his voice dripping with sarcasm: "There was a war on at the time, you know." I think that's all that really needs to be said about those cartoons. People at the time were not concerned with the sensitivities of the people who had bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor. And why should they have been? We were at war and they were the enemy -- why shouldn't we lampoon them?

Should children be protected from such films? I suppose you could make an argument that they should be -- it's as arguably inappropriate to show a five-year old "Tokyo Jokio" as it would be to show them "9 1/2 Weeks." But for Time Warner to withhold them from an adult audience who wants to see them, either to appreciate their value as animation or to know about them as cultural artifacts of a particular period in American history, is just plain wrong. I would like to see "Coal Black" on DVD as part of an overall Bob Clampett DVD collection (I once wrote to George Feltenstein of Warner Home Video requesting that he do just that, and never got a response), and I think the entire "Censored 11" should be put on one DVD so that people can judge them for themselves.

That is what free speech is all about -- isn't it?

Tom Moran

There Must Be a (Dead) Pony!

Jonah Goldberg is trying -- very hard -- to find a silver lining in the upcoming political tsunami that looks as if it might sweep Republicans from power in Congress in November.

In his latest column in National Review Online, he contemplates not only the utter failure of the Republicans to wield power in order to put forward their ostensibly conservative agenda, he also speculates on what a Democratic takeover of the House might portend.

And he thinks it might turn out to be a good thing. Imagine that.

"Republican control of the White House and Congress hasn’t resulted in lights being turned off in Cabinet agencies or enormous garage sales of office furniture. Instead, Uncle Sam is still looking like Marlon Brando at the end of his career: bloated, sweaty, and slow moving. The GOP has become a Brando-like parody of its former self, reading its lines about cutting government without plausibility or passion.

The rub of it, from a conservative perspective, is that Republican control of the House doesn’t equal conservative control. It may not seem that way to liberals who think Joe Lieberman is right wing, but from the vantage point of the conservative movement, GOP dominance has been an enormous disappointment — good judicial appointments and tax cuts not withstanding. Our hopeful joy upon the 1994 takeover of Congress was like finding a new pony by the Christmas tree. Now it’s more like finding it slumped over dead on top of the presents."

Ah, yes. You can always count on a conservative Republican for a fancy prose style.

Now, besides the ghastly writing, what's interesting here is that Goldberg is actually admitting what some of us on the left have been saying for years -- that the Republicans in Congress have been an utter failure even on their own terms, and that they deserve to lose power.

Irony is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

So where's the silver lining? Here's where he tries to get cute:

"This may be why some of us aren’t contemplating the possible, if not probable, Democratic takeover of the House with too much dread. (Losing the Senate would be something else.) [...] as a matter of rank partisanship, letting the Democrats run wild could be good for both the GOP and conservatives, [...] If you think Americans are itching for change now, wait until they break into hives after two more years of Republican monopoly on power.

But a Pelosi-run House could so horrify voters that it would probably prepare the soil for a Republican presidential candidate in 2008. Pelosi is, if anything, a moderate in the Democratic caucus, but she is indisputably far to the left of the American center, in part because she and her colleagues mistake passionately angry bloggers for the mainstream. Letting voters see this crowd try to have its way for two years would only help the GOP in the far more important 2008 election."

In other words, we should lose Congress now because it will help us keep the White House two years from now.

Logic 101 (you know, the course that Ann Coulter had to take over in law school) tells us that if a premise is wrong, the conclusion will also be wrong. And the problem with Goldberg's argument is that his premise is wrong. And here's why: he just assumes that the Democrats will govern in the next two years as badly as the Republicans have for the last 12. But there's no reason to think that will be the case.

You see, Democrats know how to use legislative power. Republicans don't. And the reasons for that are tied in with the very philosophies espoused by the two parties. If you think, as Ronald Reagan used to claim, that government is the problem and not the solution, how can you use government effectively to get anything done? But if you think, as Democrats have always believed, that government is a tool that when used effectively can dramatically improve people's lives (as it did with, just to give one example, the GI Bill of Rights), you can use that tool to make things better.

Republicans are awfully good at complaining but not much good at anything else. With any luck the next few years will give them a lot to complain about.

Tom Moran

Media With a One Track Mind

Zoe Margolis is a fetching young woman who lives in London and works in the British film industry. She's also a sex maniac.

At least, that's what the Times of London would have you believe. In an article of stupefying banality, last month the Times outed Ms. Margolis as "Abby Lee," the pseudonymous author of the recently published blook "Girl With a One-Track Mind."

"The anonymous author of a fast-selling sexually explicit diary has been unmasked as a 33-year-old film assistant who helped produce the latest Harry Potter blockbuster," is the lead of the article. "Helped produce" in this context means she worked on the set (by the same token I "helped produce" Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway").

In real life Ms. Margolis has worked as a set runner, floor runner and third assistant director on several high profile films that were filmed in London and has also, according to the imdb, written and directed a 12-minute short film of her own, "Y." She recently appeared on "The Sharon Osbourne Show" to promote her blook and came off as a self-possessed, attractive and articulate woman in her early thirties -- the kind of woman who, if you approached her in a pub and asked, "Fancy a fuck?" just might surprise you by looking you up and down and replying, "Well, yes, I might, actually."

So what's the fuss about? She has a robust sex life and she's written about it -- is that so earth-shattering? Plenty of women do what Ms. Margolis does, and some of them even do it on videotape. Is it such news in the 21st Century that, under the right circumstances, some women can actually enjoy sex? I mean, really.

You have to wonder if a man had written a book like that the opproprium in the astoundingly hypocritical British press would have been nearly as bad, or whether the age-old double standard would have applied. If a man sleeps around, he's a stud to be admired. If a woman does it, it's time to slap a scarlet letter across the chest and put her in the stocks if not burn her at the stake.

Ms. Margolis said on "The Sharon Osbourne Show" that she's considering getting away from London and moving to New York for a while, and I think that would be an excellent idea. For one thing, it would give her new material for her blog and a potential second blook. For another, you know that line in "Love, Actually" about anyone with a British accent being able to get laid in America in five minutes flat?

It's absolutely true.

Tom Moran

Nancy vs. Nancy

Let's start with the facts, shall we? I always like to start by laying out the agreed-upon facts.

Melinda Duckett was a 21-year-old woman with a small child. The child was reported missing by the mother, who told police that he had been snatched from his crib. Two weeks after the child's disappearance the mother appeared on Nancy Grace's cable TV show, where she was berated by the host, who pounded on the table and asked, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?" In effect accusing Duckett of complicity in her son's disappearance.

The day after her appearance on Nancy Grace's TV show, Melinda Duckett shot herself in the head, committing suicide at the age of 21.

Those are the facts. What follows from those facts?

Does Nancy Grace have blood on her hands?

Andrew Cohen has an interesting piece in the Washington Post where he argues, a lot more reasonably than I would be able to, that, given the incendiary nature of Grace's show and the lynch-mob mentality with which she operates it, what happened to Melinda Duckett was bound to happen eventually.

This is what Cohen says:

"But if in the end it turns out that Grace did play a role in Duckett's suicide I would not be the most shocked person in the world. In fact, I'm surprised that violence hasn't surrounded her shtick already and more often. The combination of rage, revenge, accusation and innuendo that permeates her show and her television personality is precisely the sort of roiling, viscious, corrosive potion that leads people to think they are heroes when they are about to act as villians. I have often worried for Grace's own personal safety, figuring that it was just as likely that someone who was negatively affected by her show would try to take her out as it was conceivable that someone would in the end decide to allow Grace to become, literally, a femme fatale."

Nicely put.

I will fess up at this point. I am thoroughly disgusted by Nancy Grace and have been long before this incident. Her brand of hang-'em-high-and-sort-out-the-facts-later brand of so-called "journalism" is a disgrace to the network she works for, and they should have cancelled her show and thrown her ass off the air a long time ago. Her claiming that her show bears no responsibility for Duckett's suicide simply because it happened before the show aired is nothing short of pathetic -- the worst kind of sophistry.

I have to admit, though, it made me think.

Famed in American legend (as they say in "Citizen Kane") is the story of how Nancy Grace acquired her prosecutorial zeal. She was a 19-year-old living in Georgia and engaged to a star college baseball player when her fiance was brutally and senselessly murdered outside a convenience store. That incident turned her, or so the story goes, from a young woman who loved Shakespeare into the brutal, bleached-blonde vigilante virago we know and loathe today.

But just for the hell of it, let's imagine something -- a "thought experiement," as Bill Bennett might put it.

Let's imagine that, in the Summer of 1980, Nancy Grace had her show on CNN. And let's further imagine that a grieving 19-year-old Nancy Grace appeared on Nancy Grace's show to discuss her fiance's murder. How would Nancy Grace have stood up to an on-air grilling by Nancy Grace?

I think it might go something like this:

NANCY
Now, Ms. Grace, you’ve said that you and your fiancé had no prior involvement with his killer.

NANCY
That’s right.

NANCY
But in fact he was a co-worker of your fiancé’s, wasn't he?

NANCY
Well…

NANCY
Wasn't he?

NANCY
I don’t think that I –

NANCY
You’ve said that he was 24 when in fact he was 19, haven’t you?

NANCY
I’m not exactly sure…

NANCY
So you were the same age, is that right?

NANCY
I guess so…

NANCY
You knew him before that night, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, not really…

NANCY
You were lovers, weren’t you?

NANCY
No, I –

NANCY
You told him to shoot him, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, I –

NANCY
You had this little scheme in mind from the beginning, didn’t you?

NANCY
No --

NANCY
In fact, you planned it together, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, that not the way it –

NANCY
It was perfect, wasn't it? You get your lover to kill your fiancé, than your lover goes to prison and you’re all alone with the insurance money. You took out an insurance policy on him, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU???

NANCY
I didn’t, no --

NANCY
How many other men do you have waiting in the wings, you fucking slut? How many men have to die before they catch on to what a scheming, conniving, manipulative, murdering little bitch you are? Confess! You killed your fiancé! ADMIT IT! ADMIT IT!!!!

Do you think that, had something like that happened in the Summer of 1980, Nancy Grace might have gone home that night and shot herself in the head?

And do you think that American culture might have been better off if she had?

Tom Moran

Winds of Change at Air America

A website called thinkprogress.org is reporting that three independent sources have told them that Air America "will announce a major restructuring on Friday, which is expected to include a bankruptcy filing."

The piece continues:

"Air America could remain on the air under the deal, but significant personnel changes are already in the works. Sources say five Air America employees were laid off yesterday and were told there would be no severance without capital infusion or bankruptcy. Also, Air America has ended its relationship with host Jerry Springer."

Two points to be made here: 1) those five employees deserve their severance, and had damn well better get it, and: 2) Jerry Springer should never have been hired to begin with.

The piece continues:

"The right wing is sure to seize on Air America’s financial woes as a sign that progressive talk radio is unpopular. In fact, Air America succeeded at creating something that didn’t exist: the progressive talk radio format. That format is now established and strong and will continue with or without Air America. Indeed, many of the country’s most successful and widely-syndicated progressive talk hosts — Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, for instance — aren’t even associated with Air America."

And what was I saying in this very blog, not that long ago? Get rid of Jerry Springer and hire Stephanie Miller, you lunkheads!

I think Air America has a future, but they've made a lot of rookie mistakes. I wish I could access a copy of the letter I wrote to the guy who was founding Air America before it even had a name (if I find it on a disc I'll add it as a postscript to this blog entry). But I wrote to Jon Sinton (I think that was the guy's name) and said that instead of going out and hiring names that are recognizable but have little or no experience doing radio (as had been tried before with people like Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower, with mixed to negative results), they needed to start small and build their stars from the inside.

But they did exactly what I told them not to do, with predictable results.

Rush Limbaugh isn't a name conservative who does radio. He's a radio guy who is a name conservative. Very big difference. Air America needs radio people who are progressives.

How do they turn it around? First they have to get their fiscal house in order, which is not my department (to put it mildly).

Then they have to finish what they've started in the way of restructuring their on-air talent. Getting rid of Mike Malloy and Jerry Springer were both smart moves.

Now they need to hire Stephanie Miller. And while they're at it, they could give Katherine Lanpher her own show...

Tom Moran

Note: 9/16: I found the text of the letter I wrote to Jon Sinton (that was his name) in December of 2003. Here's the relevant passage:

"I think it's important in these times that progressives do what they can to get their ideas across to people in a way that's less didactic than the left usually is when it tries to reach a mainstream audience. One of the reasons that liberal radio hosts have failed in the past is that the majority of them, like Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower, were politicians trying to make politics entertaining, instead of entertainers talking intelligently about politics. It's similar to the distinction Anthony Trollope makes in his "Autobiography" between novelists who have to tell a story and novelists who have a story to tell. If progressives are going to win over hearts and minds on the radio they need to lighten up instead of talking down, and make the audience laugh as well as think. "

Stop Me Before I Wank Again!

Every so often you stumble across something on the Internet that you find so fabulous that you just have to share it with everyone you know. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's someting that purports to be serious that ends up being even more funny for trying so hard to be profound.

This little item is the latter. I have to admit that I howled when I read it. And with your kind indulgence I'd like to analyze it a little bit. Just a little. I don't want to ruin it by over analyzing it. That would take all the fun out of it.

The piece is from a website called israelnationalnews.com, and it is (or it claims to be -- I'd love to find out that it was a spoof, because it sure as hell sounds like it) the anonymous account of an Internet pornography junkie.

That's right. You heard me. An Internet pornography junkie.

GASP!!!!!!

"In light of a recent IsraelNationalNews.com article on Internet pornography," he begins, "I decided to come out of the closet - or in my case, the garage - by confessing my shameful personal nightmare, in the hope that my experience will help others escape their own cyberspace hells [...] Probably like me, many of the Internet's victims never dreamed that they would fall into such a terrifying web of pollution and deceit. But this is exactly what happened, suddenly, after fifteen years of a happy marriage, in a modern Orthodox, New Jersey community, where I worked as a successful accountant."

This is a typical beginning to a story like this. All was bliss in the Garden of Eden, until temptation came. Satan in the form of a snake (or, in this case, of a computer modem). I'd like to ask this guy's wife what she thinks of their "fifteen years of a happy marriage."

I'll bet I'd hear a very different story.

This guy lost his job and couldn't find another one. He was at home, unemployed, testy and very very bored.

And that, my friends, is when temptation slithers into the garden:

"I guess that was all that my evil inclination needed. I was doing a job search in my makeshift home office in our two-car garage when some foolish whim flew into my brain and got me to type a dangerous word on the keyboard. I told myself I would just have a peek to see what it was all about. Of course, I had heard about the problem of pornography on the Internet, but I had never been drawn to it before. What can I say? I was startled. Amazed. Blown away by this exciting, forbidden world at my fingertips. With a racing heart, I typed in other words, and made more brazen searches. My forehead was sweating.

When the telephone rang, I almost fell off my chair in fright, as if I had been caught in the act. It was my ten-year-old daughter, calling to wish me goodnight. Did I ever feel like a bum. But I was hooked. I kept on, eyes glued to the screen, driven by some monstrous passion. The next thing I knew, it was four in the morning. I had been transfixed in my chair for six hours. Horrified, I shut down the computer, closing the lid on the Pandora's box that I had opened, hoping to trap the devilish genie inside.

A few hours later, the alarm clock woke me in time to make Shacharit prayers at the shul. But on my way to the car, the genie got me again. Laying my tefillin aside, I switched on the computer. With a terrible guilty feeling, I sat down at the screen and typed in words and phrases that I had never dared utter with my lips. I didn't eat. I didn't pray. With a racing heart, I stared and stared at the erotic images, knowing that I was doing something terribly wrong. But I was driven - unable to stop.

When the doorbell rang, I panicked. I sat frozen at the computer, feeling like a burglar in my own garage. Without breathing, without making a sound, I waited for the intruder to go away.

Then, I remembered that the computer saves everything, so I frantically started to trash all of the endless lists of embarrassing internet history files that I had created. What would be, I thought, if my wife suddenly came home and caught me in this adulterous sin? But when the evidence was erased, I started up once again. All that day and night. I am not sure if I even ate. I know I didn't sleep.

When my wife got home, she found me crashed out in bed in my clothes. I told her I was feeling sick. I was unable to look at her, as if I had truly committed some terrible sin."

If you're reminded of "Reefer Madness" at this point, you're not alone.

He continues:

"That's how it was for the next several months. I lived the life of an adulterer, hiding my horrible secret, hardly able to look my wife in the eyes, ashamed to face my kids.

But the burning shame didn't stop me. Every opportunity I had, I was back in the garage. I told my wife I was searching for a job on the Internet, tracking down all possible openings. During the day, I would go for a drive to get out of the house, telling my wife that I was going to job interviews. I felt like a chronic gambler, sneaking off to make an illicit bet; like an alcoholic with a hidden bottle. I hated myself for lying to her, but what could I do? I didn't know how to stop. As far as I knew, there wasn't an Alcoholics Anonymous for Adult-Site Surfers like me. I would run away from the house to get away from the madness, but the minute I came home, I was back in the garage. My children complained that I was hogging the computer, so I went out and bought them one of their own, to keep them away from mine."

Don't you wish you could find out what his kids were looking at on their computer?

But I digress.

Now we come to the part of the story that had me in hysterics:

"Believing I was suffering from depression, my wife begged me to find work, any work, before I went out of my mind. She even suggested I speak with a shrink. Our intimacies ceased. I felt so low and loathsome, I couldn't bring myself to be with her when my mind was filled with so many haunting images."

I wonder if it ever occurred to this guy that his wife might have been relieved...

But I digress. Again. My bad.

"There is no point in prolonging the story. On the Sabbath, I had a break from my madness, but come Motzei Shabbat, I was back in the garage.

One night, I turned around and was shocked to see my fourteen-year-old son staring at me in wonder.

"Damn!" I screamed. "Look what popped up on the screen!"

Wildly, I smashed at the keyboard, trying to wipe out the image. Finally, I yanked out the plug. "Now you know why I don't want you on the Internet," I yelled, leading him back into the house, as if he had done something wrong, not me. The boy was speechless. He started to cry.

My God, what am I doing to my family, I thought?"

Now admit it -- as Oscar Wilde would say, one must have a heart of stone to read that passage without laughing (although the pedant in me feels compelled to point out that the question mark should come after "family," and not "thought"). I'm going to have to use that line from now on: "Damn! Look what popped up on the screen!"

Okay kids, now we're in the home stretch. The familiar template for addicts has run his course. He has hit rock bottom. The wankathon is over. Now he must make his painful journey towards the light.

Thought it couldn't get any funnier? Well, spunky, you were wrong:

"I guess that's when I hit rock bottom. I felt so ensconced in impurity that I wanted to jump into a mikvah [ritual bath]. But the mikvah in our community is only opened on Fridays for men, and that was five days away. So, I got in my car and drove out of town to a small forest lake.

"Please, God," I begged. "Help me to get out of this mess."

It was close to midnight when I parked by a secluded edge of the lake, stripped off my clothes to total nudity, as is custom when going to the mikvah, and dove into the water. I immersed myself again and again, trying to wash off the insanity that was enveloping me. Then, from out of the sky came salvation.

When I got back to shore, my clothes weren't there. Back and forth, I ran along the beach, searching and searching, but nothing was there. The only thing the thief had left behind was my cellphone. Standing there naked, without clothes, without wallet or identity, I knew that it was from God. I knew with a soul-shaking shudder that the horror and humiliation I felt had come to cleanse me, to make me understand how far I had fallen.

I had no choice but to phone my wife. I told her I had gone for a swim. That a thief had stolen my clothes and the car. I huddled alone, like Adam, shivering, hiding naked in the bushes, until she arrived. She gazed at me like I was crazy. What could I say? We drove back home in silence. Her eyes were filled with tears. That's when I made the decision to stop.

The next day, I went to the rabbi and told him my tale. Like an alcoholic at an AA meeting, I came totally clean. I told the whole story. For the first time in months, I felt a sense of relief. He didn't give me a sermon. He didn't have to. He told me to come every morning for Shacharit prayers and invited me to learn Torah with him for a half-hour each day. By the next day, he had found me a job with a very good firm. He never said a word about the computer, as if it never happened."

And now the "takeaway," as they say in the world of network television:

"It has been over a year now since I broke the habit. I go to the synagogue every morning and learn Torah for a half-hour with a friend. In the evenings, I learn Torah with my son, and three times a week with a neighbor. For now, the evil genie is back in the bottle. To be sure he stays there, I switched to a porn-free server. I can't say that the temptation has left me completely, but knowing that I have to face the rabbi in the morning keeps me out of trouble. And things, thank God, are good again at home."

I hate to repeat myself, but I'd like to hear his wife's opinion of that last assertion.

I have to admit, I feel a little sorry for the poor schnook. It never occurred to him that maybe his wife could have been turned on by this material, too? That maybe if he'd just told his wife that first night, "You're not going to believe what I saw on the Internet," they'd be a happy couple today watching Jenna Jameson videos together?

Because it sounds to me that, although he claims to have kicked his pornography "addiction," he's become a slave to something that's a lot worse.

Is there an Organized Religion Anonymous?

Tom Moran

Statistics and Definitions

There are two Washington Post stories that pretty well define where we are at this stage of the midterm elections. Either story is revealing in and of itself, but when you put them together and create a sort of an Eisensteinian montage, as I'm fond of doing, they reveal a lot more about The Way We Live Now.

The first story is by Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, and concerns how the Republicans are so desperate to hold onto Congress in November that they have given up all pretense of trying to debate the issues. Which makes sense, of course, since they have absolutely nothing to run on. So instead, what they're going to do is spend all their resources and their considerable war chest in smearing their Democratic opponents and hope that that will prove a winning strategy.

I know. You're shocked -- shocked! -- to hear this.

"The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

The hope is that a vigorous effort to "define" opponents, in the parlance of GOP operatives, can help Republicans shift the midterm debate away from Iraq and limit losses this fall."

90% of their advertising budget. 90%. Does any single statistic better encapsulate the naked desperation and the intellectual bankruptcy of the Republicans at this stage of history than that?

Well, now that I think of it, maybe there is.

And that statistic would come from another Washington Post story. Written by Dana Priest and Scott Tyson, it points out a simple fact.

The fact is that it has been five years since the attack on 9/11, and Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found. The man who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, the man whom George W. Bush once said he wanted "dead or alive," is still at large.

More than that, the Post article says that:

"The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world — no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image — has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

"The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence" that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone "stone cold.""

So. 90% of Republican assets being used solely to smear Democrats. And Bin Laden still a free man five years after 9/11. Which statistic do you find more revealing?

Tom Moran

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

President Sunshine thinks, much like his wife does, that everything is just hunky-dory and there's nothing to worry about.

He kind of reminds me of Kevin Bacon at the end of "National Lampoon's Animal House," vainly holding up his arms against the human tsunami that's about to knock him over and flatten him to the pavement, yelling, "All is well!"

Why do I think this?

Check out this lead from an ABC News item on an interview that Bush gave to the Wall Street Journal (the original is only available to subscribers, which is why I'm quoting it secondhand):

"President Bush says he believes Republicans will retain control of the Congress after the November elections, even as members of his own party predict a loss of some seats."

It gets better:

"In an interview with The Wall Street Journal's editorial page editor, Bush was commenting on how he planned to resurrect his push to change Social Security next year when he was reminded that some polls show Democrats were likely to win control of at least the House.

"I just don't believe it," the president told Paul Gigot, according to an account published Saturday.

"I believe the Republicans will end up being running the House and the Senate," the president was quoted as saying in the interview Thursday aboard Air Force One.

Bush said his confidence is based on his belief that voters will be convinced that Republicans were right to cut taxes to stimulate the economy, and that the GOP has a better understanding about the need to nurture Iraq's fragile government and spread democracy."

Don't you just love the part about resurrecting his cockamamie scheme to destroy Social Security by "privatization"? These people just don't give up. They are totally divorced from observable reality.

I'm actually starting to wonder whether or not Bush is mentally ill. It really would explain a lot -- don't you think? The fact that he is so clueless and so delusional would be very easily explained by the fact that there was something wrong with him mentally. If you read Peter Singer's fascinating book on Bush, "The President of Good and Evil," you might be tempted to draw the same conclusion.

We need a Democratic Congress -- House and Senate -- because nothing else will be able to keep this idiot in line.

And with any luck, a Democratic Congress will be able to do what's necessary to remove his sorry ass from the office he's disgraced.

Tom Moran

GOP Tsunami Warning: September Edition

It seems that things are even worse for the Republicans than we thought.

"I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant," said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. "He's been an embarrassment."

What makes Ms. Knight's statement so ominous for the GOP?

Barbara Knight is from Macon, Georgia. The heart of the old Confederacy. For a woman from the state that spawned Margaret Mitchell and Scarlett O'Hara to compare a sitting president to that Yankee who beat the South in the Civil War (and who proved a disaster as President) is pretty earth-shattering.

In the AP story from which I'm drawing these quotes, Shannon McCaffrey writes that "A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in the midterm elections. With control of the Senate and House in the balance, such a seismic shift could have dire consequences for the GOP."

Three out of five. Think about that for a minute. Three out of five.

A lot of this has to do with the war. The AP piece states that:

"The movement of some Southern women away from the Republican Party tracks with national poll results showing that women have become more disillusioned with the war and were more likely than men to list the conflict as the important issue facing the country.

Nationally, the AP-Ipsos poll found that only 28 percent of women approve of Bush's handling of the war. Bush did better in the South, but only slightly _ just 32 percent of women in the region said they approve of his handling of the war."

Meanwhile Newt Gingrich (remember him?) has his usual Big Ideas about how the GOP can pull out a victory in November.

Sounding remarkably like Captain Queeg discussing the strawberries, Newt claims that:

"Although the conventional wisdom is that Republicans will have a tough time this fall, I believe that we can still win -- but not without substantial changes. [...]

Republican victory in 2006 depends on a return to the American values that twice elected Ronald Reagan and returned the House to a Republican majority with the Contract with America."

Ah, yes. The Contract with America. His one brief shining moment. He does really sound like Captain Queeg, doesn't he?

Unfortunately for Newt, this is not 1994. Like Alice Cooper still putting on the horror-flick makeup even though he's a senior citizen and looks ridiculous in it, Newtie hasn't figured out that his glory days have passed him by a long, long, long time ago.

I think that, instead of doing his usual bloviating, old Newtie should do a little listening to the women in his home state. He might learn something.

From the AP piece:

"Teresa Cranford, 39, also of Macon, said her support for Bush was lukewarm in 2004, but she ultimately voted for him so he could finish the job in Iraq. As the death toll has risen, so has her discomfort.

"I'm a mother and that makes me think differently about it," Cranford said.

Lynn Hamilton, 44, said she still supports Bush even though her backing for the ongoing war has waned.

"As a mother you worry, 'Am I going to lose my baby boy?'" said the Gray, Ga., resident. "A mother's view about war is often going to be a lot different than dad's is."

Neither Cranford nor Hamilton has decided how they plan to vote in the midterm elections, although neither ruled out voting for a Democrat.

"I'm not a straight party-line Republican anymore," Cranford said."

The question these statements (and others like them) bring up is a serious one: this is going to be a one-time thing, or might this be the beginning of a serious realignment of Southern women away from the GOP?

Because if it is, then the Republicans have a far more serious problem than just one midterm election -- no matter what Newtie thinks.

Tom Moran

Gone With The Draft

Rep. John Murtha has an interesting piece on Huffington Post.

Here's the part I found the most interesting:

"While the Administration stresses that we are a country at war, they refuse to spread the burden proportionately. Instead, they pursue tax incentives for the rich, run up our federal deficit, and spend astronomical sums in Iraq with little or no control over wasteful and fraudulent spending. This is not the picture of a country at war. Consider the following:

The current war in Iraq has lasted longer than the Korean War, World War I and World War II in Europe. This war is the first protracted conflict in modern times in which our nation has not utilized a draft for additional support. If the President is genuinely serious in his comparison with communism and fascism, perhaps he should reconsider a call to reinstate the draft."

Now, while I find the logic of Rep. Murtha's argument pretty much unassailable, I nonetheless have problems agreeing with him. Those reasons are very personal.

I don't feel that I can in all good conscience call for a draft. When I was of military age there was no draft, and I never had to serve in the military. And since I am no longer draftable, for me to call for a draft for people younger than I am when I wouldn't be put at risk myself would be, in my opinion, somewhat hypocritical. Or at least that's how it seems to me. I don't want to be one of those commentators (like General Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard) who's all gung-ho for other people to go off to a war he doesn't have to fight himself.

But the fact that Bush and his co-conspirators think they can fight a war on the cheap is somehow very American -- or at least it's the way we seem to have evolved. We want it all at the same time and we don't want to have to give up anything. We're a people who want to have our cake, eat it too and lose weight -- all at the same time. And what this administration wants is to see to it that only a tiny fraction of the population takes on a disproportionate percentage of the risk and the sacrifice involved in this war -- that way popular discontent won't boil over, as it did, for instance, with Vietnam. That's why you see the same troops being redeployed to Iraq over and over and over again -- they have no other way of doing it, short of a draft. there just aren't enough troops to go around. Not without a draft, anyway.

Now imagine if this government did what other governments have done in this country during wartime. Imagine if they raised taxes. Imagine if they rationed meat and rubber and gasoline. Imagine if they reinstituted the draft and started conscripting 18-year-olds to go off to Iraq and fight -- and they didn't allow for college deferments.

How long do you think it would take before this country exploded? Ten minutes? Maybe twenty?

Tom Moran

Risky Business

People are calling the death of Steve Irwin "tragic." I disagree. Let me explain why.

I don't suppose there are too many people out there who don't know who Steve Irwin was, but I'll fill you in anyway. Steve Irwin was an Australian documentarian who had a show on The Discovery Channel where he would handle poisonous snakes and come dangerously close to crocodiles -- hence his unofficial nickname, "The Crocodile Hunter." He was shooting a new show called "Ocean's Deadliest" and that title proved to be all too true when in the course of the shoot he was stung in the chest by a stingray and instantly killed.

Now, any man's death is sad, especially for the friends and loved ones that they leave behind. But the word people are tossing around in the aftermath of Irwin's death isn't sad, it's tragic.

And is it, really?

If you're his wife, or his small children, I suppose you would say yes. They have been deprived of a husband and a father.

But what about the rest of us?

Let me give you a counter example. If a gay porn star, a man whose speciality was being the passive partner in unprotective anal intercourse on camera, were to contract the HIV virus as a result of his career choice and die of AIDS, would you call that tragic? Or would you say that the man was engaging in risky, dangerous behavior and that his conduct finally caught up with him, as it was bound to eventually?

How is Steve Irwin any different? If I spent my life running in traffic and eventually got hit by a car and killed, would that be a tragedy, or would that be simply a matter of the odds catching up with me?

Steve Irwin -- who by all accounts was a nice, decent, personable man -- risked death on a daily basis. When you get too close to dangerous creatures (as Roy Horn can tell you), you are putting your life on the line. You may be able to get away with it for a long time, but eventually the odds will catch up with you, as they caught up with Steve Irwin.

We all make choices in life. We understand that our choices come with risks and potential unfortunate consequences and we act accordingly. Sometimes we take those risks into account, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we don't. But when we continually put ourselves in harm's way it's only to be expected that at some point, if we push it too much and too often, our luck will run out.

Steve Irwin's luck ran out this week. It's sad, especially for his family. But don't call it tragic.

Tom Moran

Has Hillary Hit the Glass Ceiling?

According to an article by Sarah Baxter in Sunday's Times of London (a paper, we should note, owned by Rupert Murdoch), "Friends of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate."

Now is this just wishful thinking on the part of Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London? Or is there something to this?

My first impression is that the unnamed "friends" mentioned in the article have to be smoking crack. There's only one reason why Hillary Clinton wouldn't run for president, and that's because, having looked at the field and sized up the competition, she thought that if she ran she wouldn't win. In that scenario she's better off staying in the Senate. But the fact is that she's up for reelection to the Senate this year, and is sure to win in a landslide, so even if she runs and loses in 2008, her seat in the Senate is safe. So what's to stop her from running in 2008?

The Times piece says that "Some Democratic party elders — the American equivalent of the Tories’ “men in grey suits” — say Clinton may back out of the race of her own volition."

Again, the sources aren't named and they don't say why she "may back out of the race."

Is there a reason for Senator Clinton to back out?

Well, yes, there is.

She could be looking at what happened to her fellow Senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, realize that the nominee may well be decided by 200,000 die-hard party faithful in Iowa and New Hampshire, and realize that, although she may have name recognition, national appeal and a ton of money to throw around, she can't win over those 200,000 voters, who are apt to be more to the left than Democrats as a whole. Although she has recently been calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the fact is that Hillary has been a pro-Iraq war hawk, backing up President Bush on his mad incursion into that country. And that support is going to cost her dearly in the early primaries, where it is safe to assume that the vast majority of voters will be violently anti-war.

"Her final decision is likely to be made next spring," the Times piece states. "One close friend of the Clintons said: “There is no way she won’t run for president.” According to a member of “Hillaryland”, her close-knit inner-circle, she would be letting herself and her supporters down if she declined to take a shot at the White House."

And she'll be letting Democrats down if she runs and loses, which I think is increasingly likely.

That having been said, I'm not inclined to place much credence in this story. I think that Senator Clinton wants to run, former President Clinton wants her to run, and all her crazed acolytes want her to run. At this point I think that anyone who seriously thinks she won't run for president is crazy.

But I think that Democrats, and the country, would be better off if she didn't. I think she'd do a good job in the office if she won (although I realize that the current occupant of the White House hasn't exactly set the bar terribly high), but I don't think she can win a general election.

The question is, who can?

Tom Moran

The Answer, My Friend...

Several media outlets -- including The Atlantic Monthly and Slate -- are writing about an "epidemic" of teenage oral sex. Apparently young girls barely into puberty are performing the act that Linda Lovelace made famous on a shocking scale -- witness the story that Caitlin Flanagan relates in her article in The Atlantic, "about a bar mitzvah dinner dance on the North Shore of Chicago, where the girls serviced all the boys on the chartered bus from the temple to the reception hall." I can't help but think that this story, which she relates secondhand, is apocryphal -- otherwise footage of the incident surely would have made it to You Tube by now.

Why is this happening? Theories abound. Some say it's the impact of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, ignoring the fact that today's 12- and 13-year-olds (the ones who are ostensibly performing these acts) aren't really old enough to remember the whole Lewinsky incident and the impeachment crisis that followed from it. For them, it's ancient history.

Some are claiming that it's the impact of parental notification laws, making it more difficult for teens to get an abortion without their parents finding out about it. "When it becomes more troublesome to get an abortion," writes Tim Harford in Slate, discussing the research of Thomas Stratmann and Jonathan Klick, "teenagers seem to cut back on unprotected sex." That thesis will get a reality check very soon, when the so-called "morning after" pill hits the market and becomes available without a prescription. While it will be technically unavailable to those under 18, how much do you want to bet that kids will be getting their hands on the pill in large numbers? I plan on purchasing several cases which I will be handing out at Junior High School playgrounds like Tic-Tacs as a public service.

But I don't think it'll matter much. I think the so-called epidemic in oral sex (by which I mean young girls performing fellatio on boys their age or perhaps slightly older) can be understood by taking into account the following factors:

Girls Want Attention
Never underestimate the insecurity of young girls -- or the extent to which young boys can (and will) ruthlessly exploit that insecurity. A lot of girls this age will do anything -- and I mean anything -- to be noticed by the opposite sex.

The second factor flows from the first:

Boys are Pigs
You'll notice there isn't an epidemic of cunnilingus going on here -- this appears to be a one-way street. Girls are servicing boys, not the other way around.

Blowjobs are Power
This also follows from the first factor. There's nothing that gets a boy's full attention like a girl's taking his manly member into her mouth. As long as it's in there, she owns him. In an odd way (and it's a way that will be heatedly disputed by the girl's mother, unless she has a long memory) performing fellatio is somewhat empowering.

It's Easy
Think about it. To have intercourse, you have to find a place to do it. If you do it in one or the other of the kids' room you run the risk of discovery. And where else can two kids find a place to get naked together for a protracted period of time? By comparison, oral sex only requires that the boy unzip and the girl get on her knees for five minutes at most -- and if she thinks they might be discovered, all she has to do is stand up.

Everybody's Doing It
We live in a hypersexualized country -- why should we expect that our kids will be immune from it? Unless you're Amish, it's pretty hard to keep your kids away from sexually explicit material, assuming that they're curious about it. America has become The Pornographic Society, and teenagers (whose hormones are exploding anyway) are caught up in the undertow. If you have any kind of porn in your house, I can guarantee you that your kids will both find it and watch it. Remember when you found your old man's stash of Playboys and whacked off to them (or, if you're female, if you wondered what it might be like to pose nude)? Now imagine that your kid is sitting in the basement of some friend's house watching a gangbang video they pinched from someone's older brother -- because they could be doing just that right now.

Is this something we should be concerned about? I guess it depends on where you're situated -- if you're a parent you're horrified, and if you're a pedophile it gives you hope. If you're neither, and can afford to be somewhat philosophical about it, you end up being somewhat surprised at how rational kids can be, given the draconian way that society is trying to clamp down on their natural sex drive.

And then you ask yourself -- where the fuck were these chicks when I was 13?

But that's a story for another blog item.

Tom Moran

Cleaning House at Air America

Mike Malloy has been fired from Air America radio.

This is what he has to say on his website (http://www.mikemalloy.com/):

"There will be no Mike Malloy program on Air America Radio as we have been terminated as of 8/30/06. We are as shocked as you are, especially since as recently as last Tuesday we were told we had the go-ahead to announce our return to NY airwaves and that our contract was "on the way."We are told its a financial decision. Here's the phone number to call: 212-871-8290 or email to: comments@airamericaradio.com. More details to follow as we hear them ourselves. Members of the press can contact malloyproducer@aol.com to schedule interviews."

There has been a lot of talk as to why Malloy was let go by Air America. He apparently had on an adept of Lyndon Larouche who made statements that were not rebutted by the host that were considered to be over the line. People have said that he was too critical of Israel (and in particular its incursion into Lebanon) for the powers that be at Air America.

What do I think? Well, I've listened to Mike Malloy off and on since Air America came on the air, and I do have an opinion on the matter.

Air America made the right call.

Whenever I've listened to Mike Malloy I've been profoundly uncomfortable with his brand of fire-breathing rhetoric. At times he comes close to sounding like a left-wing Ann Coulter in masculine drag. Do we really need that? Is a left-wing hate monger somehow better than a right-wing hate monger?

Progressives are at a crossroads. It certainly looks like the Democrats are about to recapture the House and possibly even the Senate. It's time to think positively and try to turn this country around. A scalpel is needed, not a bludgeon.

So I'm in agreement with the management of Air America, except that not only would I have taken Malloy off the air, I wouldn't have hired him in the first place. It's ridiculous that someone like Stephanie Miller, one of the smartest, savviest people in radio, is not on Air America. With any luck this might give the management at Air America the ability to put her on their network.

And while they're at it, they might want to rethink Jerry Springer as well.

Tom Moran