What's in a Name?

People are starting to get the idea that things in Iraq are more than just bad.

Several news organizations are bucking intense pressure from the White House and calling what's going on in Iraq by its real name -- a civil war. The Los Angeles Times, CNN, the New York Times have all done it, and now NBC has joined them. Matt Lauer made the announcement on the Today Show.

"For months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war, and for the most part, news organizations like NBC have hesitated to characterize it as such," Lauer said. "But after careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted, that the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas can now be characterized as civil war."

This begs a question: if the Sunnis and Shiites are doing nothing but killing each other, then what the hell are we doing there? Acting as referees?

Meanwhile the administration, which has forgotten nothing and learned nothing, continues to be in denial as to the nature of the reality in front of them. Witness Tony Snow on board Air Force One talking to the press (this quote, like the preceeding one, comes from the L.A. Times):

"What you do have is sectarian violence that seems to be less aimed at gaining full control over an area than expressing differences, and also trying to destabilize a democracy — which is different than a civil war, where two sides are clashing for territory and supremacy."

Doesn't it sound like Tony Snow is a recent graduate of the Donald Rumsfeld Academy of Sophistry?

I don't know what to do about Iraq. For a long time now my thought has been that we're screwed if we leave and we're screwed if we stay. The only intelligent thing to do was never to have invaded the country in the first place, and short of an ability to turn back time that option is unavailable to us: the situation is what it is, and we have to deal with it. But it seems to me that the first step in dealing with the situation is to call it by its right name. And the Bush Administration with their usual incompetence can't even get that right.

Tom Moran

What's Up With Lindsay Lohan?

"My mom is going to kill me for talking about sleeping with people," Lindsay Lohan recently told Elle magazine, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. "But I don't want to put myself in the position where I'm in a monogamous relationship right now. I'm not dating just one person." Which, given some other reports of Lohan's love life, seems to be an understatement of Olympic proportions.

Okay, so the young lady (who is, after all, only 20 years old -- an age at which young woman are apt to get a little trampy) likes to sleep around. What's the big deal? Well, ordinarily I would think that a given person's sex life, even if they're a celebrity, is their own business. But when they discuss it publicly, and when it takes on more importance than what they do for a living, maybe it's time to take a look at it and try to figure out what's going on -- both with the person involved and with us. Why are we so interested by who Lindsay Lohan goes to bed with?

Take the following incident, reported at length by the (not necessarily reliable) National Ledger.com, which cites the (also not necessarily reliable) British press:

It seems a recent conquest of Lohan's was a Brit named Calum Best (don't ask me who he is -- he could have been the bellhop at her hotel for all I know). What interesting about this story is what is reported as Lohan's conduct when Best tried to leave the hotel room where he'd spent five nights shagging Lohan to attend to business:

Now the story really gets strange. When Best tried to leave her suite at London's Sanderson Hotel, Lindsay tried to stop him, reports the Mirror.
The 3am Girls Eva Simpson & Caroline Hedley report: When the Love Island Romeo tried to leave her suite at London's Sanderson Hotel in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Lindsay called some heavies and tried to stop him going.
Calum, 25, insisted he had a plane to catch - he was due in Belfast later that day to switch on the Christmas lights at City Hall. But when he told Li-Lo that he'd have to love her and leave her, she was having none of it.
***
Convinced he was off to meet someone else, the 20-year-old Herbie star called the hotel's security.
The girls "spies" claim: "Staff thought Lindsay wanted them to get rid of Calum - they couldn't believe they wanted help to keep him there. She was going crazy, demanding to know why Calum had to leave. She wasn't listening when he told her he had to work."She was convinced he was going to meet another girl behind her back and was determined to stop him leaving. In the end they managed to calm her down but she went to bed in a real strop, cursing Calum and saying she never wanted to see him again. He jumped into a car and sped off."

So what are we to make of this behavior? That she was inspired by "Sex and the City" to sleep around and is a wee bit needy -- as young women tend to be in situations like these? Or is something else going on?

What we know about Lindsay Lohan from her own admission is that she has problems with sex and shopping (her shopping binges are well documented). When you tell a mental health professional that a given person has a serious problem with both compulsive sex and shopping, light bulbs practically go off over their heads. Because that is a dead giveaway that the person involved has a specific psychological condition.

Could Lindsay Lohan be bipolar?

This is the definition of bipolar disorder, according to the website of the Mayo Clinic:

Bipolar disorder is characterized by an alternating pattern of emotional highs (mania) and lows (depression). The intensity of the associated signs and symptoms varies. Bipolar disorder can range from a mild condition to a severe condition, and there may be periods of normal behavior.
Manic phase
For many people, signs and symptoms in the manic phase may include:
Feelings of euphoria, extreme optimism and inflated self-esteem
Rapid speech, racing thoughts, agitation and increased physical activity
Poor judgment
Recklessness or taking chances not normally taken
Difficulty sleeping
Tendency to be easily distracted
Inability to concentrate
Aggressive behavior
Depressive phase
In the depressive phase, signs and symptoms include:
Persistent feelings of sadness, anxiety, guilt or hopelessness
Disturbances in sleep and appetite
Fatigue and loss of interest in daily activities
Problems concentrating
Irritability
Chronic pain without a known cause
Recurring thoughts of suicide

Does this describe Lindsay Lohan?

I greatly admire Lindsay Lohan as a performer, and think she's one of the most gifted actresses of her generation. But I find it disturbing when her Paris Hilton-esque escapades and self-destructive behavior gets more coverage than her work. And if, as I suspect, it's because she's suffering (as many actresses have over the years -- from Clara Bow and Vivien Leigh to Margot Kidder) from a psychological condition that can be treated, then the sooner she realizes it and does something about it, the better.

Tom Moran

Betty Comden: 1917-2006

One of the few remaining greats of the golden age of Broadway and Hollywood is dead. Betty Comden, who wrote with her partner Adolph Green either the lyrics or the book (sometimes both) for the Broadway shows such as On the Town and Wonderful Town, and the screenplays for the films Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon, has died at the age of 89.

I was surprised that a lot of the obituaries of Comden seemed to concentrate solely on her work as a Broadway lyricist ("Betty Comden, Lyricist for Musicals, Dies at 89" was the headline in the New York Times), when she co-wrote the screenplays for two of the greatest movie musicals ever. Singin' in the Rain heads the list of the movie musicals loved even by people who don't like musicals (it's one of very few musicals to make the British Film Institute list of the greatest films of all time -- the critics poll in 2002 had it in the top ten), and The Band Wagon is one of Fred Astaire's best, a delicious satire on the hard slog of putting on a Broadway musical that was even more funny because it was written by two people who knew the process from the inside. It's also not generally known (except by films buffs) that Comden and her writing partner, Adolph Green, wrote the last film to co-star Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, The Barkleys of Broadway.

I was lucky enough to see the last show that Comden and Green worked on for Broadway, The Will Rogers Follies, and many years later I had a brief phone conversation with Ms. Comden at the time of the revival of Wonderful Town. Although in her late 80s and not in the best of health, she was clearly delighted that the show, which she said was Adolph Green's favorite of all the shows they worked on together (perhaps because they and Leonard Bernstein put together the entire score, music and lyrics, in a month -- I'd like to see someone do that today!) was receiving its first Broadway production since its premiere half a century earlier.

Betty Comden has left us with a rich and permanent legacy of classic work both on stage and on film. She will be missed.

Tom Moran

Rupert Bites the Bullet on O.J.

I was tempted over the past few days to comment on the whole O.J. Simpson book and TV show controversy, but I chose not to, for several reasons. There didn't seem to be anything to say about it that a lot of other people weren't already saying, for one thing. I mean, once you've gotten past I can't believe anyone would do anything quite this scummy to make a buck and then you stop yourself and say, Oh yeah, I forgot -- it's Fox and Judith Regan, what else was there to say?

But now the story has taken a new turn. It's being reported in the press (I found the story on Forbes.com) that Rupert Murdoch himself has pulled the plug on the book and the TV show where O.J. Simpson, found not guilty in a criminal trial but found liable by a jury in a civil trial for the murders of his former wife and Ron Goldman, would tell the world how he might have killed the two victims if he in fact was the murderer. You know, hypothetically speaking, of course.

Given the large advance that Simpson reportedly received for the book and TV interview (which was supposedly going to go to his children and not himself, thus avoiding the civil judgment), this is a lot of money for Rupert Murdoch to be eating on principle -- but then we know that Murdoch doesn't have any principles except money. So why is he caving now?

“I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson,” News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said in a statement released earlier today," reports Lacey Rose of Forbes.com.

And it never occurred to any of these bozos beforehand that this project might cause pain to the families of the victims? Who do they think they're kidding?

Murdoch caved in to pressure from within his own ranks -- the mutiny of people like Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera, who to their credit pointed out that this entire enterprise was nauseating and immoral. It also helped that Fox affiliates were threatening not to broadcast the O.J. special, and you can bet that sponsors weren't exactly lining up to have their commercials on the show either -- especially after O'Reilly threatened to boycott any product advertised on it.

In other words, Rupert Murdoch didn't get morality or ethics all of a sudden, and he doesn't give a shit about the pain he might have caused the families of the victims. He pulled the plug on the project because it was bad for business -- or perhaps it made it a little too clear what a scummy little enterprise Fox really is.

At any rate, the show is over -- for now. But expect advance copies and galleys of the book to turn up on eBay, fetching exorbitant prices. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see this project end up at another company -- which might help Murdoch recoup his losses.

He is a businessman, after all.

Tom Moran

Happy Birthday, Louise!

For those of us who are silent film buffs, this week marks a very important occasion.

Yesterday was the 100th birthday of one of the great icons of silent cinema: Louise Brooks. Her centennial is being celebrated in various ways, including screenings at the Eastman House in Rochester, NY (the city where Brooks spent the last years of her life), a new coffee table book by Peter Cowie and, best of all, a Criterion Collection release of Brooks' most famous film, Pandora's Box.

Brooks was one of the most seductive women of her time (she managed to ensorcel the British critic Kenneth Tynan when she was on the cusp of her 70s), and many famous men was famously crazy about her. She had a Summer-long affair with Charlie Chaplin in 1925, when she was in the Ziegfeld Follies and he was in town for the premiere of The Gold Rush, and when he finally went back to Los Angeles he told the press when he got off the train that he was going to lease his studio, sell his house in Beverly Hills and make all his films in New York from now on -- a plan that was abruptly aborted when his teenage wife informed him shortly after he got home that she was pregnant with their second son.

What would some of us film buffs give for a film with Charlie Chaplin and Louise Brooks together?

If you've never seen Louise Brooks (or if you've never seen her on a big screen) you're really missing one of the great moviegoing experiences -- and if you have, then you'll understand why the great French cineaste Henri Langlois could be moved to exclaim: "There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!"

Tom Moran

The Sanest Man in the World

Christmas came early for me this year.

I was browsing through Google Books (a great resource, if you haven't looked through it already -- I highly recommend it) when I discovered that Penguin Books is publishing a new translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel by M.A. Screech.

Who is Rabelais? Who is M.A. Screech?

For those of you who know me, you know that the French monk and physician Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) is one of my favorite authors (try to imagine an author who makes James Joyce appear pellucid and the baked beans scene in Blazing Saddles seem refined), and that I have had a webpage devoted to him on the Internet for almost a decade.

If you're interested you can take a look at the webpage here:

http://members.aol.com/Feuillade/TomMoran14.index.html

Sounds intriguing, doesn't he? By the way, if you're wondering about the odd look of the page, it's colored the way it is because red and white are the colors of wine. And Rabelais loves wine.

Anyway, M.A. Screech is one of the world's foremost experts on Rabelais. According to his publisher, he is "a fellow of All Souls College and an honorary fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, as well as a fellow of the British Academy. He is a world-renowned Renaissance scholar who has published widely on Rabelais, Montaigne, and Erasmus." His book Rabelais, published by Cornell University Press in 1979 and long out of print (and almost totally impossible to find -- I won't tell you how many years it took me to get my hands on a copy before I found one in a used bookstore in Toronto), is one of the indispensible guides to a very difficult author.

For years I've been thinking to myself that Screech should translate Rabelais himself -- or at the very least make a revision of Jacques LeClercq's Modern Library translation -- and today I find out totally by accident that not only has he actually done it, Penguin is going to be publishing it next month!

As you can see, this makes me very happy.

So I'm recomending that all the readers of CelticProgressive (however many that is -- I have no idea how many of you are out there) make a New Year's resolution to try reading Rabelais in M.A. Screech's new translation at some point in 2007. As a character in John Fowles's Daniel Martin puts it, Rabelais comes off as one of the sanest men who ever lived, and his gusto for both living and knowledge is something we could all stand to be inspired by.

Tom Moran

Some People Just Don't Get It

Somehow I'm reminded of the line that Boss Jim Gettys says to Charles Foster Kane: "You're going to need more than one lesson, Mr. Kane. And you're going to get more than one lesson."

George W. Bush, after having arrogantly made a recess appointment of John Bolton to the United Nations, has resubmitted his appointment, hoping to slip it in and make it official before the Democrats take over the Senate in January. Bolton's recess appointment will expire in January unless the currently Republican-dominated Senate confirms him before then.

Do you believe the nerve of this guy? Has he learned nothing from the past week?

Bush's original recess appointment of Bolton was a perfect symbol of the arrogance and the hubris of this administration, and the fact that he thinks he can push that nomination through at the last minute using a Congress that has been repudiated by the voters of this country tells you all you need to know about Bush's learning curve -- it rather closely resembles a flatline.

Bolton won't be confirmed, and from the looks of it, we're going to have a rough two years before we get this numbskull out of office.

Tom Moran

What Do We Do Now?

In case you don't recognize the allusion, the title of this blog entry alludes to the last line of the 1972 Robert Redford film "The Candidate." Directed by the underrated Michael Ritchie, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see one of the best films about politics made in the past 40 years (check out his wonderful film "Smile" while you're at it).

But to get back to the fallout from the midterm elections.

I've been giving this some thought, because Democrats are in power now, or they will be soon, and it's time to make the switch from carping on ther sidelines at an admittedly inept and corrupt Republican Congress and Administration to actually governing. How well we do that will determine where the country goes in the next two years, and will help decide who wins the White House in 2008.

The first thing we have to realize is that we can't govern like the Republicans did. As tempting as it might be to give them a little payback by locking them out of the process as thoroughly as they locked us out for the past decade or so, it's just not feasible. Arrogance on that scale would lead to disaster. Democrats and Republicans are going to have to find a way to work together and to find what common ground there is to get as much as possible done.

Impeachment, sad to say, is probably a dead issue. As much as Bush deserves to be tossed out of office, we have to be better than the Republicans, who impeached Bill Clinton in the last two years of his administration out of pure spite and because they thought (wrongly, as it turned out) that they could get away with it. We need to figure out a way to work with Bush, and that will be hard to do if we're trying to impeach him.

What this election shows is that the kind of partisan politics engaged in by the GOP has been thoroughly repudiated. The conservatives in the GOP have to purge the fascists and the neo-cons in their ranks if they want to have a chance of making a comeback on the national scene any time soon.

Democrats seem to have captured the center in American politics away from the Republicans. How well they govern, and whether or not we win the White House, will be determined by how well we can hold onto the center.

And if I had to pick a presidential ticket for 2008 at this point, it would be Gore/Richardson. More on that later.

Tom Moran

Democrats Take the Senate

The AP is reporting that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate.

George Allen will concede the race to Democrat Jim Webb as early as tomorrow night, they are reporting.

My guess is that Allen is doing what Nixon did in 1960 -- accepting defeat rather than go through a protracted recount battle to preserve his political viability in case he wants to seek elective office in Virginia in the future. It's the smart move.

If this is true, it means that Democrats control both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. Of course, the odds that the Democrats will be able to put forth a widespread progressive agenda is very unlikely. As much as President Bush deserves impeaching, don't look for that to happen in the next Congress. Instead, look for incrementalism -- the minimum wage will go up, some of Bush's tax cuts, especially those for the wealthy, will be allowed to expire. But mostly Democrats will be relegated to the role they've been playing for the past 25 years -- walking behind the elephant in the circus parade with a big shovel.

And the GOP has seen to it that there's a lot to shovel.

Nonetheless, I can't help but think of something that Rush Limbaugh said in 1994.

The equivalent of the Berlin Wall has fallen. Liberalism in America has actually been written out as a dominant ideological governing force in the United States. You ought to feel good about this, folks. In the broad sense, it is something to celebrate and feel extremely smug and good about.

Just switch Liberalism to Conservatism, and it's a pretty good description of what happened this week, don't you think?

Tom Moran

The Fallout Falls on Rummy

The Democratic win last night is paying off already.

Donald Rumsfeld is out as Secretary of Defense. Does anyone think that if the Republicans had picked up seats in Congress last night he would be out the door today?

Also, Democrats have picked up this morning one of the two seats needed to take control of the Senate. Montana went over to the Democrats and right now James Webb is ahead in Virginia -- if that lead holds, the Democrats will have control of the Senate as well as the House.

There will be more to say about last night and what it means in the days to come, as we begin to realize what changes are in store for our country. But it would seem that things are going to get better in America now that Bush and his neocon henchmen have been completely repudiated.

(I'm still waiting for Ann Coulter's column to say that last night's results prove that Democrats are incapable of winning elections.)

Tom Moran

Where Do We Go Now?

The era of the Republican majority is over.

In the most symbolic victory of last night, Nick Lampson won his race for the House in Texas. Tom DeLay's old seat, the one from which he was working to create a permanent Republican majority, is now in the hands of a Democrat. How sweet is that?

It looks right now that the Democrats will have won 28 House seats, with the Senate still undecided as recounts take place in two contested races -- in Montana and in Virginia. The Democrat is in the lead, however, in both races as of this moment.

Have we gotten what we wanted? Is this the political tsunami that I've been predicting for the past year and a half?

Well, as the old saying goes, if it isn't, it sure as hell looks like it.

There were some disappointments, of course. While Nick Lampson's win in Texas was particularly satisfying, two of the races I was following with great interest (Tammy Duckworth's House race in Illinois and Ned Lamont's bid to unseat "Holy Joe" Lieberman in Connecticut) fell short.

And while some conservatives are sure to claim that these results weren't nearly as bad as they could have been, that it's normal for a president's party to lose seats in the sixth year of an administration, and that this shows how little America trusts liberals (I think I've just written Ann Coulter's next column for her), the fact is that this is a great day for Democrats, and yesterday's vote was a stinging repudiation of President Bush and the Republican Congress.

That's enough for now. Now we have to figure out where to go from here.

Tom Moran

Just a Few More Hours

It's funny. I have every reason to feel good today (for many complicated reasons that most of you aren't going to know about), but right now all I can think about is disappointment.

Are we going to be disappointed tonight? And to what extent?

I doubt the Republicans will hold onto the House, but what about the Senate? I know if Ned Lamont loses to "Holy Joe" Lieberman (as seems likely) I'll be extremely disappointed. Same with Harold Ford in Tennessee.

But I went and voted like a good citizen, and tonight I'll be watching the returns with the folks in Rockefeller Center. At least, that's the plan right now. It could change.

I think a very dark period in American history is about to turn around starting tonight. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

Tom Moran

Quote of the Week

Finally, a self-proclaimed Christian who actually gets it. Thank you, Kristin Chenoweth.

This quote comes from a feature article by Richard Ouzounian in the Toronto Star:

"When you think about it, Jesus was a poor liberal Jew. If he were alive today, he'd be working with people who have AIDS. I wonder how he would have felt about the people who call themselves 'Christians' today."

Ms. Chenoweth is currently in rehearsals for "The Apple Tree," which will begin previews in New York at Studio 54 later this month.

Tom Moran

The Weekend Before

I'm not so much worried about the midterm election at this point as I want it to be over. I think the Democrats will convincingly take over the House and have a very good chance at taking over the Senate. If the GOP has any chance at all of avoiding disaster it will be in the Senate, but I'm hoping that a rising tide drowns all Republicans.

Have we finally learned our lesson? Really? Have we figured out by now that entrusting the government to Republicans is like asking a Luddite to fix your computer?

I hope so. I really do. In the meantime, this cable-less Democrat is looking for a place to watch the returns on cable on Tuesday. Any ideas for a place in Manhattan where a progressive can watch CNN in public? E-mail me.

Tom Moran