Woodward Revisited

Oh man. Is it possible I'm going to have to revisit my opinion of The Washington Post's Bob Woodward? For years, I have had a highly developed theory about Woodward, based on the left's view of his two Bush Books, which performed a kind of lengthy fellatio over the "decisiveness" and message coherence of the current administration. The theory, which is hardly original, holds that Woodward, once the knight in shining armor who saved us from Nixon, had gotten too close to his sources, and was cherishing his position as the go-to-guy in journalism. He believed himself, it seemed, immune from the corruptions of power in the current moment simply because he had revealed power's ugly machinations 30-odd years ago. And, it appeared, he was totally wrong; much like Judy Miller, he seemed to claim for the Bush administration a coherence and wisdom that none of the rest of us finds remotely plausible. My own problem with him was that in interviews promoting Plan of Attack, he seemed to think that he could make decisions about what did and did not happen in the administration based on his interpretation of the truthfulness of his interviews. I heard him on Public Radio, on a call-in show, answering a caller's challenge that perhaps the Bushies had lied to him by saying, essentially, "no, that's not possible, I spent too long talking to them, many hours of interview, and they were being candid." And maybe they were -- but the credulousness was still remarkable and deeply disturbing.

But now I have to take it all back, damn it, because, as you all know from today's New York Times, Woodward's new book is apparently an exercise in exposing the inner turmoil of the Bushies, and their absolute inability to adjust to facts on the ground in Iraq (probably precisely because they can't be bothered to read the newspaper). (I adore, by the way, the Times' snarky comment that they acquired an advance copy of the book by paying retail price for it -- a little swat at the administration's "politically timed leaks" accusations.) I feel that, in the interests of my own journalistic development, I had better read this book.

So it looks like Bob Woodward is not only going to make me rethink my evaluation of him, I am also going to be starting a book club in his honor. I hereby initiate the Bacon Bob Bookclub. Welcome!

Our Unpaid Correspondents: I See London, I See France...

From time to time, readers give me tips on stories I might find interesting. Reader H from Dallas, Texas is the source of today's news of the strange and ridiculous. Apparently (and this has been independently authenticated through news sources), a 5th grade art teacher from Frisco, Texas took 89 of her students to the Dallas Museum of Art to get some of, you know, the culture. One of the kids went home talking about having seen naked people, the parent complained, and the teacher got fired.

Now, this is obviously the worst kind of religio-reactionary bullshit. And further proof that we live in a theocracy. And, somehow, more evidence that we're going to bomb Iran. But the nature of this bit of stupidity is worth teasing out.

First of all, let us consider the Renaissance. This was an era so completely dominated by the Catholic Church that it makes our own little theocracy here look like a bacchic idyll. And yet, the hallmark of public sculpture in the Renaissance -- PUBLIC sculpture, like in town squares, not hidden away in museums, was the male nude. There is, of course, Michelangelo's David, which graced the Piazza della Signoria (main square to you and me) in Florence. And it's not like anyone saw that as excessive and tried to correct the error -- right next to him is Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, which has TWO nude men. Add to that Cellini's Perseus, which is a sculpture of a nude man slaughtering a nude female and holding aloft her decapitated head as he stands literally on top of her dead (nude) body. You've also got, in the same space, Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines, in which a nude man carries off a protesting nude woman while trampling her nude countryman. And there are more, those are just the major ones. All of these works, with the exception of Michelangelo's, were made during the era when the Catholic Church was confronting the Reformist menace from the north; they had every reason to crack down, but it doesn't appear that anyone in this generally reactionary and conservative culture found anything odd, or threatening, about walking past sculptures of naked people every single dingle damn day.

Of course, the important distinction is between naked and nude. None of the figures in the above sculptures is unclothed. They're nude. To be unclothed is to be naked -- to be viewed as a personal body, personally exposed. The nude is fully dressed, however; he or she is clothed in artistic convention. This distinction is most famously made by John Berger in his fabulous Ways of Seeing, but others say it, too, because it's so obviously right. Whether the nude is the object of sensual desire depends on gender and context, but in any case the nude is never viewed in the same way as real bodies. Manet's Olympia, for instance, isn't nude; she's naked, precisely because she has none of the happy conventions that turn the body as we physically experience it into a simulacrum that we visually devour. It might be quite proper to be offended if your kid had actually seen naked people -- maybe -- on the grounds that that provides too much explicit information about sex; but it's ridiculous to be offended by the nude, precisely because the nude has been stripped of all of the offensive bits.

The proof of the pudding is that no one can figure out what work this kid saw that was so "offensive". Looking around the museum, at the sea of nudes, no one can see ANYONE in any of the pictures who looks the least bit naked. They're all nudes, and in that sense teach you absolutely nothing about what naked people look like. Thank god for that, by the way, because most people you really wouldn't want to see naked.

From stories like this, you'd get the impression that religious people have never glanced under their own clothes and found out that they're naked under there. What a shock! But that's not really the point; what they should have done was looked under their clothes and found out that they're not nude under there.

Project Polling

Of course, you are all watching Project Runway (and if not, start. Immediately.). It's the show where a bunch of designers compete to win the approval of Heidi Klum and Michael Kors by creating bizarre, ill-fitting, poorly made, and occasionally fabulous outfits. Recently, there was an incident on Project Runway that revealed to me a fundamental truth about American society and polling data. I will now share that revelation.

Remember the Jeffrey/Angela's mom kerfluffle? For the uninitiated, this was the episode where ex-junkie, belligerent, rock-star-wannabe Jeffrey had to design for a competitor's mom. The competitor in question was Angela, a ditsy woman from Ohio with a penchant for putting little rosettes all over the hideous poof skirts she insisted on "designing". Angela's mom said she didn't like the colors of Jeffrey's design for her -- which was ridiculous, because the colors were the least of the problems with that horrible outfit. And Jeffrey accused Angela's mom of trying to sabotage him, which was patently preposterous since Angela's mom was, like Angela, pathetically incapable of doing anything remotely strategic. Angela accused Jeffrey of being mean. Jeffrey invoked conspiracy theories.

With me so far?

Ok, so at the commercial, the show ran a real-time poll, and asked who viewers sided with, Jeffrey or Angela. Now, this was an interesting poll, because by all logic, 100% of people should have agreed that Angela's clueless, schlumpy mom had no greater thought than that she didn't think she'd look good in blue. And again, this should have been obvious precisely because the problem wasn't the blue, it was the glorified grocery sack Jeffrey chose to clothe her in. But fully 30% of viewers felt Jeffrey was right -- Angela's mom was a scheming bitch.

From this I developed the 30% rule.

The 30% rule holds as follows: in response to any question, 30% of Americans will choose the most ridiculous, dumb-ass, patently flat-out wrong, obviously retarded answer. And this applies to ANY question.

You're suspicious, I know. Which is why I provide the following substantiating evidence. I think you will agree that the 30% rule allows for a new understanding of American polling.

Try this: a couple of months ago, Bush was polling at 33% approval. Now he's polling around 44. These numbers are on their face incomprehensible -- how in the hell could just shy of half of Americans (and that's disregarding the frightening possibilities of the margin of error) believe that this guy is anything other than a total asshat? Well, because you have to disregard the Stupid 30. Which means that among real people -- people not predestined to be wrong on every question -- he is polling between 3 and 14 percent. Now, that's plausible.

Or try Cheney. In an excellent New Yorker piece after the infamous shooting incident, Hendrick Hertzberg pointed out that Cheney was polling at 18% -- an astoundingly low number. But why so astounding? Because -- and this is so true -- you had ALREADY internalized the truth of the 30% rule, and had assumed that nothing in an American poll could go below 30. To get to 18% approval is really to be polling at -12%, which is just so, so low. You knew this, you just didn't know how you knew it. Until I revealed it.

Here's another. Consider the 50% (roughly) of Americans who think the bible is literally true, the earth is 6,000 years old, Jonah lived in the whale, blah blah blah. Really, it's 20%. I agree -- that is still a horrifying number. But you and I and everyone (except the Stupid 30) know that 50% of the people in this country have never read the fucking bible. I have a PhD in stuff that means you're supposed to read the bible, and I've never read the bible. Parts, sure. A Genesis here, a Luke there; but the whole thing? Puh-lease. Puh-LEASE. No way. And -- and this is important -- I actually like to read. So if I didn't do it, you know there's no way 50% of Americans did it.

Of course, let's be honest, not even 20% of Americans have read the bible. Try it sometime and you'll see why not. This is why I am working on a further development in poll analysis called the Insane 10. Once I've done more research, I'll post on how when it comes to religious issues, there's a 10% inflation on the usual Stupid 30, just in honor of god.

By the way, I feel intuitively that it is the same 30 % who are always wrong -- the same people, every time. But that's probably optimistic.

Loose Talk

There's something in the news that I just don't get. What is with the reaction to Dick Armitage's supposed threat to the Pakistani intelligence minister after 9/11? You know the threat -- that we'd bomb them back to the stone age (as if they've ever left it) -- and the reason you know it is because it was HUGE news. But why, exactly? There seem to me 2 very obvious reasons, and they are pretty much mutually exclusive:

1. The quote confirms a growing public sense that the Bushies are a bunch of cowboys with an insatiable desire for violence, and a nasty habit of threatening people rather than using sissy diplomacy. This growing public sense is what you and I call a priori knowledge.

2. The quote confirms that the Bushies are on the ball when it comes to terrorism, and they get shit done. I can't elaborate on this point any further, because I find it so very stomach-turning.

Ok, but do you see the problem? 1 & 2 are opposites, and no one will say which might be the reason to report this thing. And, I have to say, the quote so perfectly fits with both 1 & 2 in terms of spanning all of American opinion, that what's surprising is that anyone found the quote surprising. I find it the most natural thing in the world that those assholes would go around telling people we're going to bomb them back to the stone age. What the hell else would you expect? And in that sense, who cares?

But I think there's a reason 3, and that reason 3 is the real reason. Reason 3 is an interesting complex made up of the following facts: Osama bin Laden is probably in Pakistan. Musharraf has made a deal with local tribal leaders that appears to allow them to operate with relative impunity. He has to make this deal because the southern and western regions of Pakistan have become a happy Taliban-Al Qaeda-Jihadist nutfarm. None of this appears likely to stop Pakistan's new jihadis from spreading over into Afghanistan and engaging the infidel there. And then, of course, last week at his stupendously belligerent press conference, Bush explained that we're not going to do anything about this because Pakistan is a sovereign nation and you can't just go bombing sovereign nations.

Yeah, I know. It's so obvious I'm not even going to say it.

Yes, I am. What about Iraq, asshole?!

Ah.

So the point here is that the quote brings into view several layers of flip flopping in our Pakistan policy, and reveals yet again our institutional inability to focus on actual terrorists who really are terrifying and who genuinely spread, you know, the terror. And, as a bonus, the quote also points out several layers of dishonesty in Pakistan's handling of their own internal troubles.

Now, the New York Times got close to linking these ideas in their story on the Musharraf-quoting-his-minister-quoting-Armitage quote, if by "linking" you mean "haphazardly dumping all together in the same story without ever articulating the connections or posing the important questions." But I would just like to say that that's not adequate. If you're going to use up an entire news cycle on a quote this obviously expressive of hypocrisy (not to mention Deadly Testosterone Buildup), you need to explain what's at stake, and what the thing reveals.

As I have just done.

Bolton, no bacon

Having just watched the News Hour, I have some thoughts on Nancy Pelosi, which I'll share some other time (mostly to the effect of, "If reciting talking points is going to make her so visibly nervous, maybe she should just not, unless she has no thoughts of her own, in which case, why is she Minority Leader?"), but right now I really need to get off my chest four crucial questions about UN ambassador John Bolton:

1. Is that or is it not a toupee? My money's on yes.

2. It's not so much the mustache, as the mustache WITH the toupee that's a problem. Not that I'm excusing the mustache, because yuck (see question 4).

3. Why do older, jowly men insist on fastening their collars so tight that their jowls spill over their shirts? In particular, why do they continue to do this despite repeated opportunities to see themselves on television and thus view the evidence of their error?

4. Does anyone -- really, anyone -- think this guy has answers to genocide? I mean, look at his toupee! Look at his facial hair! If you had sympathy for your fellow human being, would you create such a brutally rectangular mustache? I think not.

Bacon in Baghdad

On Fresh Air the other night, the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of a book about the Green Zone, talked about the various offences committed by Halliburton in their management of the cafe in Saddam's former palace. The problem, Chandrasekaran explained, was that Halliburton showed no sensitivity to the fact that they were in a Muslim country, instead serving bacon at every meal. Bacon and eggs at breakfast! BLT's at lunch! Bacon cheeseburgers for dinner (and sausages, too)! Now, ordinarily I'd agree about Halliburton's wastefulness and cultural insensitivity (not to mention their apparent intention to murder all military personnel through coronary heart disease). But this is bacon we're talking about, so I paused for a moment to consider. And you know, I think this might be the only thing I've heard of Halliburton doing that I think is both smart and frugal. For one thing, there is no other food that can hold up to three meals a day. Bacon is the perfect breakfast basic; the perfect luncheon sandwich meat; and the perfect spice for burgers and salads. And everyone who is not prohibited by religious doctrine loves it. What else can make such enormous gastronomic claims? Chicken? I don't think so. Steaks? Be serious. And since Halliburton is buying in bulk, shouldn't they buy in maximum bulk for the best prices? And since our taxes pay their contract, doesn't the purchase of enormous quantities of bulk bacon start seeming -- dare I say it -- patriotic?

Of course, it goes without saying that forcing bacon on a Muslim country is just wrong. But in all seriousness, once you've invaded that country for no good reason, and through your deliberate negligence thrown it into a civil war, is a little apple-smoked flesh of the unclean swine really a dealbreaker? Probably a better moment to demonstrate our sensitivity to Muslims would have been finding out that there's more than one kind of them before invading. And at this point we need to save every penny for the Iran war. So I say, bring on the bacon!

Somebody Pooted!

There is something very important in the news today which demands a comment. Hugo Chavez, the polemical, America-hating Venezuelan president, addressed the United Nations General Assembly, and called Bush the devil. I mean, the Devil. Like, Chavez crossed himself at the mention -- the whole bit. Now, others on the blogosphere, those with lesser minds, are treating this as the important aspect of the story. Venezuelan president calls Bush Beelzebub! Sure we've all thought it, but we wouldn't say it! Not in public, not while sober! And we're not presidents, anyway, so who cares what we say? But this is merely distraction, because what is important is not that Chavez said Bush was the devil -- it's that he said that Bush farted while addressing the General Assembly, and that the room still stank of sulfurous devil fart a day later. Now, that's news! But will the mainstream media address the fart accusation? No. Only you, who read this little blog, will be fully informed.

Me Again!

Everyone I know will have an alias on my blog. I am Me, of course; but others will not be Them. They'll be nicknamed, to protect what's left of their innocence, just as I am protecting what is left of mine. So, in the interests of privacy, I will mention that one Wheely has informed me that I must update often in order to be relevant. She is the only person reading this blog at the moment, so her views are paramount. This update is a long distance dedication to Wheely. Turn up the volume!

Here I Am!

By popular demand, I have decided to have a blog. I didn't want to, but you insisted. Here I will, with incomparable irregularity, post "thoughts". Many of these will be about bacon. Some will be about you. I also anticipate rants. Check in often, leave enlightened.