Grim News/Further Evidence

As in, the news is grim, and I find it all further cause to doubt the Bush regime's ability to ethically govern an anthill, let alone Bushlandia, er, I mean, America.

Here are some of the problems: On the same day the US military announces plans to arm tribal groups in Pakistan to combat terrorism, it also announces that attacks in Iraq have fallen to their lowest levels since... last year.

Neither of these announcements strike me as Bush triumphs. The Surge (and that insipid name - it was a soft drink! a green soft drink, I tell you!) has pushed things back all the way to the golden days of Feb., 2006, when we were all so innocent about what was happening o'er yonder in the desert.

The Pakistani tribal arms-deals worry me even more. (And why announce them? Aren't these just the sort of silly clandestine activities that we're supposed to hear about thirty years later, after all involved CIA agents have retired and bought bungalows in Havana?) With the entire nation about to crack up over its dictator/president's attempt to stay in power, should the US really be meddling, somewhere in the back of party, handing out guns and whippets to a bunch of tribal dudes who - sure, may not love al-Qaeda - but also may not love the US? And whose opinions, which we probably don't know very well, could change quickly. Especially given, you know, the whole country's cracking up...

That's 5th grade wisdom, friends: Wait until the civil war clears up to start massive militias. (The Times' article's lead picture is of a member of "the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 soldiers, stood guard at a bazaar.")

In gooder news (allow my purposely lapsed grammar to indicate my disdain for all this positive Republi-statusquo "we're doin' okay!"-mongering), Bush and Rice are pushing for Mid-East peace, finally, as well as peace with North Korea. This is something of a turn-around, since B&R (hereforward "The Warriors," after the movie gang) declined to continue with Bill Clinton's Mid-East/N.K. peace plans.

A friend of Roger Cohen predicts the latest Mid-East talks will be "a unique example of failure," which strikes me as fine way to phrase the general outlook for the waning Bush presidency. Failure. And not even good ole American stealin'-shit failure, as with Nixon. Bush's failure is all his own.

Finally, our last depressing world fact comes to us courtesy the National Endowment from the Arts, which reports that children aren't reading as much as they used to. Well, thanks for that statistic. "The Surge is working" (a lie disguised to keep us happy about our state of constant war?) coupled with "kids ain't reedin no mor" (a truth revealed to depress us into inaction?).

Happy Monday.

What Cheney Was Saying Decades Ago - A MUST-SEE

Wow...

Contagious Stupidity

From today's NYTimes:

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq.

WTF?

Isn't it 5th-grade wisdom - perhaps rather 2nd or 1st - that an invasion with no justifiable purpose that has only gone from worse to worst is not and was never worth supporting? Why does America now so value its presence in Iraq? (Did no one else read Theater of War?)

The article doesn't help a ton, and neither does Mark Schmitt's snarky attempt at boo-hooing Democratic pres. candidates' ability to make detailed plans.

It's not comforting to e-open the paper and see that 1) Americans are increasingly, not decreasingly comfortable with the idea that America invaded Iraq, way back when (Gawd, that was, like, four American Idols ago!) and 2) New America Foundation members are not fans of good policy papers.

They want more blather. Empty, Republicrackerish blather, good for nothing, to be held to nothing, to be sprinkled like the chaff of millet on the strong winds of a next CBS fall lineup, or the next celebrity murder-suicide.

"The candidates disappear behind a screen of white paper," Schmitt writes. Paper = reading = the intellectual = reason. And we can't have that. We're a country of Faith, a good, honest, Sarkozy-ian realm...

Ba-humfuckery.

I suppose comfort isn't to be wanted or even warranted these days. I'll keep my policy papers and my anti-war stance, thankyouver'much. How much longer before this America now starts to resemble the Britain of Children of Men? Not much longer, perhaps. But by then I'll have my alligator ranch, so the New American "centrist" faux-radicals won't be able to sneer at me without (reptilian, masticatory) repercussions.

Did Oldboy "Inspire" Me To Feed My Cat This Morning?

Oldboy is not the problem. Hostel II--as poor an example of art or taste as you may ever see--is not the problem. Movies, books, television shows, and Marilyn Manson are not turning America's little ones into gun-toting psychopaths.

From Michael Cieply's "After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence," today's NYTimes:

Given [Hostel II's] subject matter and the marketing campaign that has already come with it — posters featuring a woman’s severed head and other grisly images are now scattered on the Web — the Lionsgate film is emerging as a test of continued audience enthusiasm for such onscreen brutality, which some commentators have connected with the Blacksburg gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s video and its possible echoes of the Korean revenge film “Old Boy.”

“What might have been traditionally acceptable exploitation in one period can be seen as stupendously bad taste in another,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which examines the links among entertainment, commerce and society.

We know some commentators will always say some funny stuff about media and violence.

But the New York Times and its staff should better understand and, more to the point, since I'm sure they do understand, better represent the origins of art that deals with bloodshed. As I wrote earlier, there have always been works of art about violence because there has always been violence. Old Boy does not advocate, prescribe, inspire, or even really comment on violence. It is a movie about revenge (and incest, and potstickers, and eating raw octopus--again, a great movie). So is Kill Bill. So are many other movies--good, bad, and stupid.

We hope the Times more carefully addresses artistic violence in the future. For my part, I'm not going to see Hostel II, but not because I believe it will inspire me or someone I know to go on a shooting rampage. I'm not going to see it because it's going to be poorly written, badly acted, and probably more than a trifle boring.

(Kill Bill Vol. 3, on the other hand...)

ethel says women are canaries

With regard to Virginia Tech, Ethel Spiliotes (5th grade bloggstress) writes on behalf of the women:

Before killing the 30 people in the classrooms, he [Seung-Hui Cho] was ONLY involved in stalking two women and then killing two people in what they were (and are still) calling a DOMESTIC incident (as opposed to MURDER). Why do people think that "people" who only stalk and/or kill women are not dangers to public safety? Aren't women part of the public? First they kill small animals, then women, and then they go for the real people. So watch out!

While we dissect the ins and outs of whether this incident will re-capture the public's attention to gun control, wonder if violent Asian movies provoked the killer, and use it to demand attention to suffering in Iraq, Ethel draws our attention to one of the more relevant pieces of the story - the victims.