Walking Off the Stage

Teresa and Laura are dressed in similar white/cream color suits. And they acknowledged it. And seemed quite friendly. They touched each other's arms and as they stepped away from each other, there was that woman-to-woman lingering thing.

This part was so bizarre. Underscored the theater-nature of the whole production.

Flipping channels now--George Stephanopoulos seems to have liked Kerry's substance AND tone. Sen. Edwards is looking boyish on NBC, cheerleading as he should be. David Brooks on PBS says Kerry didn't hit hard enough on the management of the war. Terry Moran on ABC thinks the pres was "in a scrap up there." Yup. "But he managed I think to get through his main point." Thinks Bush's camp will say he "handled his own." Doesn't think he hung the flip-flop charge around Kerry's neck effectively. Dean Reynolds, ABC, says the public will enjoy that Kerry fought back. Points to Kerry's phrase:

"It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong."

...Please, Let It End-Debate Cont'd. 4

Kerry: "Certaintly sometimes can get you in trouble."
"I have no intention of wilting. I have never wilted in my life. And I have never wavered." (Who believes this?)

Jim: most serious threat?

Kerry: "Nuclear proliferation." (Says it again. Now Kerry's plugging an old book he wrote.)
Why are we still proliferating nuclear weapons. "I'm going to shut that program down." Show the world we're serious.

Bush agrees, WMD is biggest threat. Why does he smile when he says such serious things? It's sort of maniacal.

Jim: both agree, single most serious threat is nuclear prolif?

Kerry: Immediate bilateral talks with North Korea.
Bush: Can't tell you what a mistake this is.
(Everybody smirks. Kerry because he thinks this is silly, Bush because he thinks Kerry's an ass.)

Jim: Putin.

Bush: Firm. Resolve. Bringing them to Justice. (He may have practiced these words in a mirror. Now he says that Vladimir is his good friend. We know, you looked into his eyes and saw his soul. How about calling him Mr. Putin, or something more respectful. Do you call Tony Blair Tony?)

Kerry: I was there right after the transition. (U.S.S.R.) I regret what's happened in these past months. Putin controls all the tv stations, opposition being put in jail. .. but we always have to stand up for democracy.

Returns to North Korea. "Just because the president says it can't be done, doesn't mean it can't be done."

Jim: Does this raise any hackles?

B: nothing to say. Some blappity.

K: Your blap is not relevant. Now shove it.
"It's not what the American people thought they were getting when they voted."

Closing.

Kerry: We both love the country. LOVE. We have different convictions. For instance, I like to windsurf, and George likes to eat milk and cookies every day at noon.

I believe we're strongest when we build alliances. Fresh start, new credibility. Sounds good, John.
"I believe America's best days are ahead of us. Because I believe the future belongs to freedom. Not fear."
(Very good, nice phrase.)

Bush: Don't let em see you sweat. Military. Military. Offense. Fight. Terrorists. Home. Build. Alliances. National Security. Other countries. Spread freedom. LIberty. Free Iraq. Nation's interests. Liberty. Hard work together (You and who?)
Bush sees a valley below. But there ain't no mountain high enough...
Support troops. God bless us longer, now, please, yes. Very good. You Are Done.


I'm going to go out on a limb here and say....Kerry rocked.

...Instablah-Debate Cont'd. 3...

Blah.
Kerry: making the distinction between who our enemy is. Yes, John, tell the people that there is a difference. Tell them that we saved our best troops from Afghanistan so they could go to Iraq and fight the war the Bushies wanted.
Saddam would not have gotten stronger, he says.

Bush: "Listen. Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us." You do? YOU DO?
"He had the capability to make weapons and he would have made them."

Kerry: 35-45 countries in the world had a greater capability. Brings up Darfur.

Jim: Concept of preemptive war?

Kerry: Pres always has the right. No pres through all Amer history has ever ceded right to preempt right to protect U.S.A. Got to do it in a way that passes "the global test." "Prove to the world you did it for legitimate reasons."
Cuban Missile Crisis.
OOh, brings up Bush refusing to sign Kyoto.

Bush: Doesn't get what Kerry mean by "pass a global test." "You act to make this country secure." (Points here?)
International Criminal Court. Makes them sound like criminals themselves. "It was the right move not to join a foreign court where our people could be prosecuted." (Never, ever lose unilaterism.)

Jim: North Korea and Iran.

Bush: Just said "NUCULAR."
(He's getting bullyish when talking about North Korea, then he loses his shit . Um, then he pronounces "mullahs" "MOOLAHS" and continues to delight by contrasting this word with "NUCULAR" a couple more times. Wheeee!)

Jim: Darfur. Why don't either of you talk about it.

Kerry: "Yes, it is a genocide." Says we can do this through the African union, but need logistical support.
"We've got a back-door draft." Stop-loss programs.
Would double the number of special forces. "I'd be prepared to do it" forces in Sudan. Never another Rwanda.

Bush: Around and around with sanctions in Iran. Audience gets snoozy on this.
"Genocide."

(Yawn.)


Bush: Admires Kerry's service to our country. Admires his daughters. Admires that he served in the Senate. But doesn't like his record. Won't hold it against him that he went to Yale. (HAW!)
"You cannot lead if you send mex-mixed messages." Again, he says, "mex-mixed messages."

Kerry appreciates the personal comments the pres just made.
"I'm trying to put a leash on them." -Bush on his daughters.
"Well, I've learned not to do that." -Kerry
(I feel vomitatious. Right up in my sterum. Feel like puking.)

...Insta-Debate Cont'd 2...

Bush is um-uhing. Saddam loyalists...um, uh...the uh...Baathists...
B: "And it's hard work. I understand how hard it is...I see on the TV screens how hard it is."
No mixed signals. Plan in place. Elections in January. (Right, give it a go.)
"It's hard to go from a place where ppl get their hands cut off or executed" to a free place.

Kerry: "Even knowing there was no imminent threat, knowing no connection to al Qaeda, he would still have done the same thing."
Nothing but respect for the Brits. But points out the tiny foreign troop level. "You can't tell me..." Is a powerful iteration.
"Not the kind of coalition we were described when we talked about voting for this."
"They just decided the time for diplomacy is over and rushed to war..."
"He misled the American people when he said we would go to war as a last resort. We did not go as a last resort."
"Fresh start, new credibility."
"We need to be smarter about how we wage a war on terror." (Again with the "smart" dig.)

Bush is going off on a bizarre tangent. "Osama bin Laden doesn't decide how we get to defend ourselves." (Kerry looks amused.)
"Saying you can succeed if you change your positions." (Kerry laughs, realized the "flip-flop" discussion has begun.

Kerry: "I've had one consistent position."

Bush: (Blink.) "The only thing that's been consistent about my opponent's position is that he changes positions." (Smirky.)

Jim: War worth cost in lives?
Bush: "Every life is precious...hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harms way."
"Missy Johnston. Her husband PJ got killed." Um, what? Using this poor woman's grief are we? These moments are always so cheap.
"Missy understood..."
"But I think it's worth it, Jim."
"It will help change the world."

Kerry: I understand "because I know what it means to lose people in combat."
"It is vital for us not to confuse the war with the warriors."
Yes. Remind them.
"We have a choice here..."
Yes, go to Johnkerry.com. This must be a first -- plugging a web site in a presidential debate.

Bush is responding with a nonsensical dig at Kerry changing positions and says this is a "grand diversion." Bush can't follow logic when he speaks.

Kerry: Pottery Barn rule: If you break it you fix it.
"I have a plan to do it. He doesn't." (Powerful--looks at Bush and does the thumb over hand gesture.)
"Think things through properly." (Another dig at no-thinky presy.)

Kerry isn't doodling off into corners and looking for dust bunnies. He's stickin to it.

Bush: uses 100,000 troop strength number. Statistics are malleable. Kerry smiles.
Ah, the "brave, brave man" Allawi.
Again, Kerry's criticism of Allawi. He sounds like a kindergarten teacher scolding Kerry. Maybe he should read him "My Pet Goat."

Kerry: Okay, everybody wants the Iraqis to be free, thanks for pointing that out, George.

Bush: hubba, hooba...
"They're fighting us cause they are fighting freedom." (This is so reductive, childish. Maybe someone should read "My Pet Goat" to Bush.

Insta-Debate

I fear that Kerry will hyperventilate during this first question. And when he thanked the state of Florida, I feared he would lost his allotted time. When they just showed Bush's face, he had set his mouth tightly--very unattractive.

Bush: "multiprong strategy"--um, huh?
Taliban no longer in power? What about Taliban still in existence while we peel off to fight other wars.
"Cause i understand free nations will reject terror." Um, no.
"I've shown the American people I know how to lead." You have shown us you know how to barrel through the world like a linebacker.
"A group of killers who will not only kill here but kill children..."
"Constantly stay on the offensive and at the same time spread liberty." How, exactly?
Iraq is "hard work." Understatement.

Kerry: We also have to be smart." (dis!) brings up 9/11 commission. Nice. Kick the rationalizations to go to war to the curb.
"Pres. made colossal error in judgement." Bush looked like he wanted to spin his head around.
Bin Laden. OOoh, criticizing "outsourcing" to Northern Alliance. Interesting.
Blinky, blinky Bush, when Kerry jokes "where do you want me to begin" on the "colossal errors."
Bush still looking like he's going to boing boing out of a box any second now.
Kerry's eyes look strong.
Bush sniffs.
Ah, money in Iraq that should be at home. And, not only that, it should be in Afghanistan....ah, right...
10 times the number of troops in Iraq than he has in Afghanistan.

Bush: Says K declared in 2002 Saddam was great threat. Kerry nods.
"I went to the UN." Um. Then you left.
Bush is doing that smirk that makes him look like a slithering frog puppet.

Jim: what about priorites, I vs. A?
Bush: "We have the capabilities to do both." What about North Korea? Iran?
SLIP! "Of course we're after Saddam Hussein, uh, bin Laden..."
(Bad bad.)
(He's confusing the crowd with why Zarqawi is fighting Americans.)
On Allawi: doesn't want mixed signals.

Kerry: "Iraq was not at the center of the war on terror before the pres invaded it." (nice!)
no plan to win the peace. good.
Ooh, brave. brings up the body armor. Interesting choice. Waiting for Bush counterattack on K's not voting for the armor.

Bush: here he goes...Kerry voted against use of force. Way to win is to be steadfast and resolved.

Kerry: I am. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake to go there...We can succeed but I don't think this president can.

Jim: Homeland security.

Kerry: Money to Iraq, and cops program in America cut. Firehouses in Iraq, closing firehouses at home.
(Bush is pinching his mouth again. Blinky blinky.)
Kerry is much better at looking distinguished when he listens. Bush looks itchy and irritated.
And note the way when they show K and B side by side B's podium is higher. Shorty.

Bush: How's he going to pay for all these promises, "It's like a huge tax gap...anyway." (Shrug. Looks like a kid doing this.) "This is for another debate." Yes. Great.
"We've also changed the culture of the FBI..." And how's that working for you.
"The Patriot Act is vital." Blah.

Kerry: FBI. Points out untranslated tapes.

Bush: "Course we do everything we can to protect America." He's losing himself here, huffing.
(Thumping podium. Yelling.)

Jim: Bringing troops home.

Bush: (stuttery): Train the Iraqis. "Artificials deadlines won't work."

Everyone thanks the troops. But Kerry adds: "Help is on the way."

Anecdote from Kerry: Two Guard members saying "We need you." Brings up Bush I. (I fear Bush will prostrate himself and beg to be killed on stage if Kerry keeps up with this Daddy-did-bad trope.)

Bush brings up the $87 billion supplemental.
Here's kerry's chance.
"I made a mistake in how I talk about Iraq, the president made a mistake in invading. Which is worse?"
(AHA.)

Attacking B for not holding "statesmanlike summits." Halliburton. Dis.

Bush: "My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war?" Yes, Britain, okay. Poland, uh, okay. Anyone else? Bueller?

We Wore Wellingtons in Venice

There is something about the gloom of these storm-ready skies this afternoon that is making me anxious. It is similar to days in Venice when the alarm for acqua alta would sound in the morning, alerting the city that by evening we would be walking on raised platforms and sweeping water from our doorways. Those days were electric: I've always had a hard time expressing it, but the acqua alta was so alive to me. I mean, I felt like living, like seeing what could happen in the world, as if I finally understood deeply that there was something worth seeing.

Today the hint of rains is not as electrifying, but similarly anxiety-producing. Less like there is something worth seeing, and more as if there is something to see, and I am missing it.

"a deep think kind of guy"

While we're on the Times, did you know they've hired Kenneth Starr to work with Floyd Abrams on their First Amendment case against the gov?


Interesting, considering the editorials the paper wrote about him. I.e.: "In 1999, as Mr. Starr prepared a final report on the Whitewater investigation, an editorial urged him to "partly repair his reputation for bad judgment by getting this report right."" (From the NY Sun article.)

Questions to Ask the Cans

In the NYT today, questions to ask the candidates. These are from Arthur Schlesinger, for Bush:

Do you really believe that there are fewer terrorists plotting against America today than there were before you began the invasion of Iraq?

•

Your version of Christianity supports and blesses preventive war. What relation is this to the Christianity preached by the pope and by mainstream Protestants who oppose preventive war?

•

Since you obviously did not anticipate the troubles in Iraq, what do you plan to do to the incompetent advisers who misled you and are responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 American G.I.'s and 20,000 Iraqi civilians? Or do you not see an accountability problem? President John F. Kennedy fired the people who led him into the Bay of Pigs. Why do you not do likewise?

These are Madeleine Albright's.

Santa Claus is Not Real

Salon came out today with a story about CBS killing its initial explication of the "patently false" docs the Bush admin used to claim that Iraq was seeking uranium yellowcake from Niger--i.e. that Iraq was attempting to make nuclear weapons. MyDD has the story in full from Salon (otherwise subscription): Censored CBS Story Leaked.

My question, one I cannot fathom an answer to, is why? Why did they choose this war with this country? I understand the ways the admin attempted to rationalize it, present it to the country as entirely necessary, etc., I just want an answer as to why, and I want more than the "unfinished business" rationalization.

I heard James Fallows (The Atlantic Monthly) on NPR last night talking about the Bushies choosing to seek Middle East peace (uh, by "peace" I mean "control") by taking the road through Baghdad to Jerusalem, which seems the only real explanation I've heard so far. Apparently, Tony Blair spent some effort trying to convince Bush to take the road from Jerusalem to Baghdad, but anyway.

Why?

Kristof Today

Anyone who has not read this op/ed by Nick Kristof should: The New York Times > Sentenced to Be Raped.

I watched him, curly-haired, in a Page One meeting at the Times once, knowing that he had been Beijing bureau chief and was starting to stand-in as a columnist, but I didn't know that he would be writing these dispatches with snark and heart that would move me every week.

(Page One meetings at the paper take place in a glass-windowed room, where passersby can see the men and women in their swivel chairs. Each time I walked by, I felt energized just seeing it.)

Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates

Also heard this this morning, on Tavis Smiley. Starting with (10.) They aren't debates!, the list is mesmerizing. Take a look at NPR : Connie Rice: Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates.

Go in the Room

This morning I heard a fantastic piece from StoryCorps, Dave Isay's radio project where everyday people enter a booth and record CDs about their lives. (The main station is in Grand Central.)

The piece today was about a woman who confronted her father--on his deathbed--about his time in a concentration camp. He had always told her that he had procured bread, etc., and generally made his life there sound to her like Robin Hood's in Sherwood Forest. When she finally confronted him that day, he told her that he had kept her out of "the room" on purpose for her entire life, and she had a choice, at that moment, to walk away or knock again. If she knocked again, he would let her in, but once inside the room, there was no way to ever leave.

(Aside: The piece was produced by a friend of mine from j-school, who I remember well from our days in the radio lab, sitting side-by-side, winding and recutting digital files. Lyrical, memorable days.)

Party Time. Excellent.

So I went outside for a cigarette, and a man who stepped out of Wayne's World is getting into his car. Shoulder-length, black stringy hair with a black Zildjian hat on top, wearing an olive army jacket. He got in his car and attached a device to his windshield that I'm guessing is a radar detector. He peeled out of the parking lot, and not a minute later a woman in a car the size of a bus pulls in. It is some kind of Ford that has a front hood-area as tall as the cars around it, and is definitely taller than my car, which I've taken to calling "The Midget." She spent a good five minutes parking it in a completely normal spot.

I think there was MSG in my soup.

The Mystery Pollster

Mystery Pollster keeps track of, yes, polls. Seems a good source for this stuff, if you trust Mickey Kaus...

Aftermath of Jeanne, in SC

 

...

The hollow notes of an echoey piano over my headphones. Specifically song number eight on a Liz Phair CD of unknown name, taking me back into my 19th year, in a low-lit room where a man would climb through my window in the cold of a Connecticut winter. I can again feel the chill of the dusky gray air, just before it snows. And I can recall the books stacked in angular piles along the floor, the anticipation of the evening, the emptiness of that time. And the man would come through the window onto the futon bed, just to say hello. But he is now long gone, dead of an undetermined overdose.

Occasionally, Bless the Foreign Press

In this case, I am grateful to the BBC for pointing out that Jimmy Carter has been speaking out before another outrageous vote debacle occurs in Florida: BBC NEWS | Americas | Carter fears Florida vote trouble.

Excerpts:
[Carter] accused Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican, of trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.

He also said: "A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."

Mr Carter said Florida Governor Jeb Bush - brother of the president - had "taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future".

"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," he added.

"With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."

****
Minus the missing punctuation in British English and my general disdain for their journalistic standards (i.e. news editorializing), I appreciate the BBC for harping on the cruddy situation in Florida.

(Also, Carter wrote this spicy op/ed in the Washington Post.

Election Scorecard

Today the great electoral divide stands in greater divergence than yesterday. And yesterday the gap was wider than the day before. I pray to the pundits that all this "stepping up to the plate" Kerry's started doing will outshine Hunchy the Dictatron's "skills" in the debates.

For now, use Slate's excellent Election Scorecard, and pet some puppies for your own neurasthenic healing. (See below.)

Yes, It's True

Yahoo! News - Bishop Indicted on Child Rape Charges

"He becomes the first Roman Catholic prelate indicted in the sex abuse scandal within the American church."

Craziness. Allegations have been made in bulk since the 1950s at least, but payoffs and cover ups and grand egos kept these men from being prosecuted. The "Hierarchy" of the church has more power than our own government (pre-Bush admin, that is) and I'm actually surprised that one of their own did not manage to slither through the charges, like all the rest.

This is a sea change for all priest-abuse victims out there.

Election General Anxiety Disorder/Syndrome

EGADS* seems to be a real, new phenomenon. At least among you people, my hyper-astute, proudly neurotic friends. Here's one email that seems to sum up the disorder nicely:

"i think i have a generalized anxiety about the coming election. after a few years w/ my head buried in the "news" and various global and local conspiracy theories, i've been trying to wean myself off it all. afterall, i know how i'm going to vote, and i rarely encounter anyone who, if they don't agree w/ me, thinks i'm not off my gourd. so, for what reason do i stay extremely informed when i can just be sorta informed?

"anyway, when i see polls or think about the f*ckers chanting "4 more years", i just get nervous. and sick. it's happening right now as i write. so, i'll think about my puppy instead." **


(*Symptoms seem to include endless news watching and then greater anxiety when either watching or NOT watching. Treatment seems to be all about puppies.)

(**Anyone up for large drinks and watching debates? Or maybe just a game of Scrabble?)

Spaperers

Leave it to Clyde Haberman to give journos a handy new nickname in the face of "bloggers:" spaperers.

The New York Times > NYC: We Have Met the News, and It Is Us. There's also this handy turn of phrase in the story: "We have to remember that we in the media think everything is about us," said Geneva Overholser, a news business veteran who teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Face it, she said, "we are fascinated with ourselves."

(Hm.)

Side note: I was once introduced to Haberman by another Times reporter as "---- Schwartz."

And on this day of atonement, I forgive the Irishman who so religiously morphed my name, and I laugh at remembering that it was Haberman who pointed out that this is exactly what had happened.

Appreciating the Finds

From FOUND Magazine 

Not Everything Is Bad

This morning is terribly satisfying. The welfare kids I wrote about have been offered some bikes and winter coats since the story came out yesterday. I can only hope that such a quick response means that more will come for that lovely family...I can't be happier right now.

Such a rare thing to feel like I've helped anyone in my work. It's not a profession that lends itself to much more than silence on the part of pleased readers and grumbling on the part of angry ones.

Now to continue the day in order to return to your regularly scheduled pessimistic blogging.

Spam Poetics

"lot mistress law would us standing hurry supper. lived nearly page jealous south
days team fell loss. though criticize even writer makes?"

[It's so hard not to blog these spams. I'm mesmerized by them. Feel free to ignore. I believe the word lists just give web search tentacles things to grab onto--e.g. note "marriage" listed so many times in this spam for Viagra, etc.--but i can't help but think they are amazing.]

quarter body repeated seemed, hour farther whom clean servants, appearance
recess taught more kind themselves complete develop climb"
thousand progress known easy ears shoulder! fire always of before chief" much
piece america hurried planning couldnt thursday handwriting very way. green died
secret central maam hands,
road free married often degree hear kitchen game ah until, so writing living
yours garden garden return, hurrying any against mine living fixed chose
understand hundred,
ay earth looked of bad peculiar develop natural beautiful. actual scarcely that
purpose any hurrying, whenever name away no wait pounds send again teacher
shine. sister already believed men disappear drew afternoon others" hot married
something wine twenty summary servant.

Fang

A coworker chipped her tooth last night, so obviously we have decided to call her "Fang."

This afternoon I bemoaned my glasses falling apart and my car breaking down, and she replied, "At least your teeth aren't crumbling on mushed up chick peas."

Well, this is true.

In other areas of possible interest, NY State has just passed a law that gives property tax breaks to veterans of the "Global War on Terror" (quote marks mine, capitals, theirs).

Apparently, a vet of this "war" (deployed after Sept. 11, 2001) who has won an expeditionary medal now pays 10 percent less tax on their property. I'm just so intrigued by the capitalization, as if the naming of it makes it an official thing. Which, I guess, it does and has. Not to mention the property tax break. How many of these men and women own property?

Sticktoitiveness

"I'm just dumb and can't committ. I can't even comit to how to spell committ."

-from a very good friend who is a wonderful writer. She cracked me up with this line. Like an egg falling off a wall. You know, Humpty Dumpty?

Erewhon

"does forest than daughter? running main ago choose. told equipped pie profession
sake bit touch. particularly went whether glass teacher"

Yes, another spam of courage, from "Latisha." Following the fantastic sentences above are these unbelievable sentences:

fond grave rain disappoint passing towards, apology move wall done forty special
listen during hello, lucky middle worthy could favorite" letter glass should
caught child turn sale addition usedto, theres power past delight no private.
theres opinion chocolate pocket health school proud piece in distance,
frightened once our changed main moved loss

The beauty...
(Now these are my words.)
Just talked to a writer who said she "should take a prozac and a martini" before calling a psycho man for an interview she has to do. It really does feel like that sometimes.

Erewhon!

Elepolo and Ladyboys

Confessions of an Elephant Polo Groupie - Tailgating in Thailand with the ladyboys. By Cynthia Barnes --really, please read this. And make sure to click on the link for ladyboys.

There is a world of transexual elephant polo out there, and I bet you didn't even know it.

Cazzo!

CNN.com - Woman killed by falling cross - Sep 23, 2004

I can hear the wailings of the old ladies in black now...
Oh, wait, no I can't, the motorini are drowning them out.

All Things Considered

This morning. A tickle in my nose, probably indicating allergies, unlike the tickle on the nose, which indicates that somebody is thinking about you. Or not. But I've always liked that idea.

The car is clunking. Literally, clunking. Not pleasant.

Otherwise, coming off dreams of gun fights and Iraq, which was a kind of house in the dream, like a party, but with violence in various rooms. And vodka tonics in others.

Been enjoying Tavis Smiley in the mornings, with his Cornell West-my-brother chats and his airing of the rantings of a crazy southern Klan member. They way he held back...seems unholy, or maybe very, very holy, to keep the mouth shut and let the genius speak for himself. The guy went on--everything from communism to bemoaning the current government in a holed-up-in-Waco-style diatribe. Fascinante. (Tavis Smiley Show from NPR)

Now on to the pleasantries of the day. To stories that may or may not make me cry in the reporting and to possible trips to a mechanic, which could also make me cry.

Good day.

I'd Rather Not Sit

"In 1981, Rather decided that he couldn't occupy Walter Cronkite's chair, so for his first Evening News broadcast he read the headlines while crouching behind the desk. "

Bryan Curtis wrote this on Slate today: Dan Rather - The anchor as madman, arguing that Rather is "bonkers."

I'm loving this line: "It's as if Rather attracts half the madness in the universe, and the other half comes out of his mouth."

A kind of cosmic spew that the media loves to both broadcast and employ, but is probably equally scared of.

Exactly

"We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace."

-from Bush's speech to the UN this morning

The New York Times Transcript: Bush's Address to U.N. General Assembly

Contrastingly

CNN.com - Still burning bright - Sep 20, 2004--inspired me to find a picture of the oldest bulb still working in the country, which I had seen somewhere before. All this tech crap is making me nostalgic. For a time I never saw. How boring is that.

It's also making me think about a documentary I saw or possibly heard about a lone phone booth in the Mojave Desert. People call it. Someone usually answers. Seems like an older fashioned form of unusual connection than this thing, one that I really like. The chance of finding someone at the phone, as well as the deliberateness in dialing it, or waiting there for a call, in the sand, by the desert brush.

(This is probably the oldest working lightbulb in the U.S., or the world. "First installed at the fire department hose cart house in 1901. Then moved to fire station at First and McLeod, then to its present site in 1976 at the fire station, 4550 East Ave., Livermore, California.")
 

Land of Spam

In a new height of strange spamming, a message I got, after telling me "She'll luv it," and providing a link to something with the words "max" "do" and "demijohn" in it, provided this list:

blandish risk poach cantaloupe cockleshell coachwork catlike screwworm lung
abstracter quaver corroborate dummy incident kleenex casualty gantlet mustache
alphonse archaic terrify dapple dent oncology expend lausanne whit tenable
innermost kinglet erupt esprit awaken attentive idiotic osmium warwick
electrophorus chilean



Works for me on the absurdity factor.

Bikeables

Bike Lock Update: In case you want to get a free bike lock replacement. If you got your lock post-Sept. 2002. And you still have your receipt. And pigs have flown. And the moon is made of cheese.

Good luck.

Shaddupaya

The New York Times > New York Region > You Say Prosciutto, I Say Pro-SHOOT, and Purists Cringe

It's like I always tried to tell my father: there are vowels at the end of "mozzarella" and "capisce." He grew up with Neapolitans in Brooklyn. Obvio.

Two notes about this article:

1. I worked with that photog (Conrad) on a neat story once--we hung over the top of the Flatiron building together. (Look up at that roof sometime, there is a sculpture up there, and there is a fascinating story behind it. But don't expect me to tell it here. Feel free to ask. That is, of course, assuming you missed the original story, in the Times, in the first week of September 2001.)

Which brings me to:

2. I was down in Little Italy on September 13, 2001. If I remember correctly, the San Gennaro festival was supposed to take place either that day or the next (possibly the previous), but instead, the rides were covered with ash. I have some eerie photos from it. Maybe one day I'll share...picture Disney rides with a gray dust about an inch thick on top of them...and nobody riding them...and nobody anywhere even near them...

Small Brown Box

Now on my desk is a small, brown corrugated box, the contents of which are said vitamins and mask from previous post, as well as a letter I also received today.

This letter is on parchment-yellow paper, browned at the edges, as if very, very old.

The contents of said letter are an explanation of a group called "Plan Colombia," a group I mentioned ever so briefly in an article I wrote about protesters at the RNC. When I say briefly, I mean it was a couple of sentences that tossed off some names of unusual groups that were present in the crowd, i.e.: "A group called Plan Colombia picketed with mysterious signs, like one that said, "Stop Fumigating.""

So that was it. No more explanation, because, no, the article was not about these groups. Fine. But then this letter, with its brown edges and slanted script writing--a treatise on what, exactly, Plan Colombia is, just in case no one else had yet explained it to me--lands on my desk.

I just wonder about this woman, and her notepad, and its age, not to mention hers. Some letters I get are much, much crazier than this one, but none have surpassed its anachronism. What I mean to say is that I care less about the content of the letter than the surprising look of it. (My art director has just scanned it for me. You too can now see the oddness of its ways.)

Letter (side one) 


Now for my challenge. Do any of you receive such strange items at your place of work? Or am I the only with with a facachta job that accretes psychotic objects in the mail?

(And, for your viewing pleasure: http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/entire-ey.htm, if only because I readily admit I can't spell "facachta" for the lebn of me.)

Lobotomy Babalu

I'm not sure how you spell it, but I was listening to NPR this afternoon, and they played a piece by some musician called "Lobotomy Babalu"-- two words he liked the sound of together. And I would agree.

(I can't find any reference to it on their website, but it was on The World.)

In other news, I've been reflecting on the lesbian church wedding I went to this weekend. The only thing I can say about it right now is that if you are two women, each choosing to wear a gown in the red family, why not consider having them not clash?

And, Again, I Love My Job

Who decided that it would be a good idea to send me B and E vitamins in the mail? And who really thought that I would benefit from the accompanying black mask (like this one: http://www.omenspirits.com/Black%20Mask.htm) with the words "Who's the Superhero Behind this Mask?" written across the top?

Who?



(The Pharmavite News Bureau, for those who are truly curious...)

Monday It Is

I've never cried so much from an interview.
I'm doing a story about domestic violence, coming off of a murder last week of an ex-wife by her ex-husband, in front of their three children.
A domestic violence org set me up with an anonymous woman this morning to talk to about the abuse by her father of her mother and herself and her five siblings. He hit them all with "hammers, belts, hands, 2x4s, kicked us, slapped us, threw us around." The nothing that was done by everyone who knew--the teachers, friends, family--the fact that it keeps happening one generation after the next, arriving at our doorsteps as recently as days ago, as fresh and bloody as it was 30 years ago for this anonymous woman and her family...it was too much for me today.

Worse than talking to WTC victims' families, worse for some reason.

I cried in my editor's office for a while, and the last thing she said to me before I returned to my desk was: "Remember to keep the intensity when you write."

Fucking job.

Commentata

So here I am, thinking about you, my friends, reading so quietly in your little hovels, ahem, houses, uh, offices? and wondering why you no say nothing. And now I realize it's because I had accidentally forbidden your comments. Well, now I bless them. Enter my fray, if you so wish, please.

And if you choose to remain silent, I remind you, that is your court-mandated right.

UrBlogging

My god, this saves the day, doesn't it? Or, as I have said to some, it saves you blabbery e-mails. So now we're both satisfied.
Ah, the breadth of satisfaction

is

small.

Have reached a small, rocky peak of dissonance this afternoon that came out of nowhere. Which is always wrong. Everything comes from somewhere. Maybe this one came out of the phone calls to domestic violence groups, post-horrible wife-slaying nearby. The sadness of society, says the woman at one organization. But it's also the sadness of a man in a photograph on his knees outside his flattened home in Florida, or Alabama, or somewhere around there, and the very dizzying crunch my gut feels when I look at the electoral predictions. But honestly, it's a nameless animal that has worked its way behind my eyes, and now out my fingers.

Reminds me of a note I once received in the mail from my grandmother: "Please accept this nameless, faceless bunny. He needs a home." It was attached to a teddy bear. I kid you not.

Crap, Bikes.

Maybe you've all heard about this already, but apparently Kryptonite locks can be picked with a Bic pen. Argh.

The New York Times > New York Region > The Pen Is Mightier Than the Lock

Poll Troll

When it comes to the "science" of polling, only wacky Jimmy Breslin gets cranky about this:

"There are 169 million phones that they didn't even try. This makes the poll nothing more than a fake and a fraud, a shill and a sham."

(here's the column's link: Newsday.com, 9.16.04)

But as always, he's worth a read.

Image-ing

Just spent a while with a media guy who was talking to a few of us about going on tv as reporters (there are a couple shows people from here regularly appear on). "Simple clothes." "Men should wear foundation." "Don't look at the cameras." Blah. And blah.

One of us kept wondering about her mind going blank from nerves. Another worries about looking like an investment banker in a suit. An editor just told me when he does a show, his biggest fear is using the "n" word. He never uses this word, he just fears it might fly out of his mouth while taping. Odd. My singular fear is fear of fear itself, I guess, because I never forget what I want to say, or worry about how I come across, it's more of an instantaneous shakey thing that either happens or doesn't. No rhyme or reason as to when it happens, as far as I've ever noticed. So it's kind of like fear of fear of fear itself.

(A friend who once did a tv appearance told me he was horrified to realize that his face looked "like a white t-shirt.")

In the Coop

A dispatch: "...the cravenness out there among americans is really pandemic here. i know it sounds paradoxical, but this place draws chickenshits. they come here... well i don't know why they come here."

This is from a back message from a friend in Iraq. One wonders about the chickenshits. Ever since he wrote this to me, the word "chickenshit" rattles around my brain sometimes, as does the image of arrogant, pissy Americans in a country that hates them.

Is it a military thing? A follow-orders thing that makes men chickenshits? Or is it complete naivete? Wantonness? A desire to be in charge, but not knowing, truly, what that means?

I've also been thinking back to the war zone we lived in here a few years ago, or at least to the feeling that as reporters, we were in the place we were supposed to be as observers and interpreters. So now I wonder where in the world that place is now. Besides Iraq, it is Darfur, and so many other violent places; it is Mobile, Ala., for the hurricane, or Boston for the DNC, but I hope it is also a cubicle in New York where I can write about the assault weapons ban expiring or about a family of eight that cannot subsist on welfare and one salary. I'm beginning to know that where we are supposed to be is everywhere, which is pleasant news to anyone who ever forbid me from becoming a correspondent in a dangerous place.

It is vaguely invigorating to know that in this field there will never be dry land to try to draw water from, but instead, the wells will always be damp.

The danger seems to be mistaking a mirage for an actual oasis.

Good work, girls

Off the getting-tiresome subject of falsified, time-travelling memos, I thought I'd ponder the use of the word "girls," as it was just used on me.

A freelancer for us (not a particularly good one at that), just came by our offices, and twice offered, "Good work, girls!" etc. to my one fellow female reporter-colleague and myself.

Okay. It just sounds outdated to me. My father used to call the women he worked with "the girls in the office." They were the secretaries, I'm guessing, because as far as I can recall, there were no other women in other positions at his company till sometime in the 1990s. He made the switch to "women" sometime during my years at uberfeministy university. Occasionally, though, he still did the "girls...I mean women..."

Fine. But this is a whole new use, although I'm reluctant to say "reappropriation," cause that freelancer with the bad dye job didn't smell of new feminism - whatever that smells like.

Making the Hypothesis

Steve Smith makes a grand hypothesis about the Killian docs on his site (Smythe's World), but I wonder if he did it pre-or-post secretary on
60 Minutes?

Didn't she already say that these docs were copied from real ones? (I know, that's not all he posits.)

Soon to stop with all this memo mess. For some reason, though, this scandal's got me hooked...

The Gates of Rather

Having always been more of a Jennings woman (when I watch tv news at all), I now profess my admiration for Rather. What a thing he did on 60 Minutes last night. A deliberate and slow interrogation of that 86-year-old woman who worked at the Houston National Guard office when Lt. Bush was (kind of) hanging around. ["...secretary to the commander who was said to have written the memorandums, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. The secretary, Marian Carr Knox, said that she did not believe the memorandums were authentic but that she had typed similar documents with "the same information" that were filed in what she called "a cover-your-back file."" -NYT, Rutenberg and Zernike, 9.16.04]

Rather made a lot of what little she had to offer by the way he asked it. Regardless of the hype surrounding the memos, Rather is a fine journo. The only thing that struck me as odd was that if that had been a court of law rather than a television show, some of those questions would have been objected to and sustained. (So much hearsay!) Struck me as odd and slightly unsettling because of the style of questioning contained within a journalistic venue, but one can be happy there is still a press to tell stories in a moment like this.*

*Forgive me, I am just coming off a story I did this week about the press airing its own dirty laundry. My favorite quote to come from my interviews for it was from the head of a mega-big journalism program:

“There is a contradiction that runs right through the newsroom,” he said. “On the one hand, journalists obsess about what they do, and on the other hand, they are prickly and terrible about answering criticisms from the outside. It’s almost a complete schism.”

One could even say "complete."

Tipex Typing

There has been a lot of activity on the Internet recently concerning the forged CBS documents, and this link gives a tremendous breakdown on the typefaces by a guy named Newcomer, no less. His experience seems vast when it comes to computer engineering and typography, but I can't attest to much of it myself, having gotten a bit snoozy toward the middle of his analysis.

Yet More Evidence

In regard to Rathergate, a sad moment for us all, the truth can only come out eventually. More evidence as to the authenticity of documents from the Selectric era appears here: http://www.imao.us/img/bush_awol_memo.jpg .
('tis a fine laugh, this one.)

Blogging Off Daily...

Tom Scocca's article made me laugh, but blogging can, apparently make me blind. Favorite exerpts below:

TomScocca.com: Blogging Off Daily Can Make You Blind: "Maybe the way to do a blog story is to do a gimmick. Better yet, a really trite-seeming gimmick. It will be, like, meta: The triteness is a commentary on the triteness! Turtles all the way down!"
*
Blogging is more spontaneous than regular writing, but it’s writing nonetheless—as opposed to spontaneous blathering on cable TV, he said: "Blogging, by contrast, I think …. " (Here my notes, in my hasty scrawl, appear to say "CRIDLY OCITHS") " … takes us back to a more considered but spontaneous" form of expression.
*
The whole instant-commentary business isn’t as new as it looks. When I heard all the excitement over the fact that the bloggers were coming to the political conventions, I got out an anthology of H.L. Mencken’s newspaper writing. There it was: sharp, subjective, blow-by-blow commentary, written on the fly in 1924—1928—1932—1936 ….

"People like Mencken wrote in takes," said Terry Teachout, who wrote a Mencken biography. "I think that Mencken himself might have been quite fascinated [by blogging]."

Stop Them However You Can

Mindless headline writers, which around here, is everyone. Four people read "Gay Church Set Aflame" before realizing (upon prompting) that "Afire" might be a better alternative...

From the Tundra

Actually, from the office, which is as cold as I imagine a tundra might be. I've always like that word anyway, so a nice opportunity to use it.

After two days of slamming through two 1,000-word stories, well, they'll probably not run this week. Editors are like jailers. They let you out in the yard when they feel like it.

I did get to speak to an old prof whom I never distinguished myself to in our lecture class, but always admired for his wit and experience (at the top of just about any major news outlet in various media), if not his dodderiness. He was a perfect source for my story (about newspapers reporting on themselves) and was a witty as I'd remembered. I liked particularly that he called himself an old fogy. Foggety old fogy. I haven't the foggiest. (Props to my pops.)

In the meantime, I recall, warmly, getting warned out of a ghetto neighborhood that sits like a gloomy island in the glossy chain of towns around here, just before getting harassed by cops and men on bicycles. All this to find the house of my welfare interviewees last Friday. (Use adverbs like quarters, another old prof always said. Sorry, Kevin.)

The muggy heat in their house was awful and the light was fluorescent and draining. A boy on a bike asked me how many years of school I'd gone to as I walked up the front path, and then he told me he wants to be a pilot. I hope that boy becomes a pilot...

I always wanted to be an astronaut. At least it's close to what I do now: I leave the earth for short periods of time, explore new planets and definitely encounter aliens.

Multiculti Paper Incident

A small newspaper in Colorado has apparently picked up a story I wrote about a bias incident against Sikhs. Oddly (or maybe not), that was a story that received a large amount of hate mail from the side of people still defending the attackers, who hit two men on a street in Queens without provocation. The hate-mail writers read the story how they wanted to, it seemed, accusing me of accusing the entire population of Italian-Americans of being violent and racist because I implied that the act, committed by a few men, was violent and racist. Such is the self-possessed madness of the letter writers.

(P.S. The check they sent for reprinting was $59.44. Not a number I can make sense of.)

Learn German in One Day

Uh huh, her.
There's nothing so much I need to learn these days as just what, exactly, it means when a computer tool tells me my writing is specifically gendered. Now, I'm not going to reveal which way I fall (isn't it just like the Kinsey scale?), but you can give it a go for yourself if you like:
The Gender Genie

And They Call It Chiaroscuro. E la vita...

photo courtesy M.M.

Auspicion

Inauspicious minute to begin a blog, something i never considered doing anyway. But here we are and so it shall be.

Minus one day but nearly three years later, I'm going to write again. (Writing again outside daily writing for a living, that is.) This morning, I heard Sally Regenhard, the mother of a fireman I knew, crying on NPR. Last night, my mentor and former boss and now fine friend of sorts left for Iraq, again. "Leaving my friend," he wrote in a text message, rendering my heart inoperable for a few intakes of breath. He was on a plane, returning to a place where he feels frightened and exhausted every day, not ready to hustle his way again for months, evading hating eyes and loud bomblike sounds.

And I sit in an office, just off New York City, readying myself for the interview this evening with a 25-year-old welfare "mother" who cares for her 5 younger brothers and sister, since their mother died in May from AIDS. The father, it seems, has a mysteriously disabled arm and leg (since his youth in Puerto Rico), and one daughter, 17, has two babies. The family pays $1,675 a month for rent, with social services taking on $1,200 of it. One full-time job. Seven children. An absent father and a dead mother. And one born-again 25-year-old saying that "God is on our side."

Right now, only words are on mine.