Don't Question This Man's Patriotism!

Whatever you do, don't you dare question Robert Jensen's patriotism. He loves America just as much as any red-neck, homophobic yahoo who has a "traditional" view of patriotism.

Just because Professor Jensen says:

* "The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing. . . ."

* "as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat . . ."

* "When we admit defeat and pull out -- not if, but when -- the fate of Iraqis will depend in part on whether the United States makes good on legal and moral obligations to pay reparations and allows international institutions to aid in creating a truly sovereign Iraq. . . ."

* "The planet's resources do not belong to the United States. The century is not America's. We own neither the world nor time. And if we don't give up the quest--if we don't find our place in the world instead of on top of the world--there is little hope for a safe, sane and sustainable future."

Keep your neocon grumbling to yourself; this man is a patriot!

Dept. of Obvious: "Polls: Europe Negative on Bush Re-Election."

Believe it or not, I had actually heard about this story a few weeks ago when Gonzales was first nominated. I decided not to move with it not out of any affection for Gonzales, but because his stepson, Jared Freeze, is a young graphic designer and this job working for Hustler was his first gig out of college. Right or wrong, it seemed to me that he didn't deserve to have his life ruined because of his step-father's job.

Still, now that it's out, I'll be interested to see the reaction.

It was like Airwolf but better

This past Tuesday I had the opportunity to tour the Sikorsky helicopter facility in Stratford, Connecticut. The company is locked in a fierce competition with Lockheed over who gets to make the next Marine One. I won't take a position (yet) on which contractor's chopper best suits the president, but I do admit the tour of Sikorsky's main factory was impressive. "Connecticut is a blue state, but this installation is all red," one of the reps told me. And I believe it. Enormous American flags hung from the hangar lofts while burly, bearded men donning American flag t-shirts refined blade spindles and assembled gearboxes. About 40 Stratford plant employees have served or are currently serving in the Middle East.

Seven other journalists and myself were then taken through a hangar where EH-60 Blackhawks were being worked on--some of them destined for Iraq, a few for Colombia. I asked one of the vice presidents about the Blackhawks in Iraq (the Army owns more than 1,500 of them). "We're constantly trying to improve their flaw tolerance," he told me, but added that almost every single Blackhawk that returns to its base comes back with at least one bullet hole in it.

We then entered the Executive Transport Center and stood less than 100 yards from the super-secret sector classified as "Yankee-White-Clearance." Beyond that the rest of the reporters and I speculated on what we saw. The Sikorsky officials wouldn't even acknowledge there was anything there, as if it were invisible. Said one, "I ask that you don't write about that." And so, in the interest of national security, I won't. (But I think I saw two pilots who looked a lot like Jan Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine.)

Rush to Judgment

Galley Friend M.L. sends along this transcript from Rush Limbaugh. M.L. says he's shocked that our friends in winger world were going to turn the welfare of soldiers into an LMB case, saying, "Al Franken hasn't been right about anything for 10 years, except for one thing: Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot." Here's what Limbaugh said yesterday:

Drudge has just splashed something fascinating. I don't want to--I probably shouldn't say this, but I want to say it because it's the honest truth. As you know, we have not talked about this on this program. We have not talked about this question, series of questions about armor on the vehicles that Rumsfeld got. We had audio yesterday, and in fact I was all prepared to have fun with it. I'll tell you what I was going to do. Here's the news. Apparently a reporter set up Rumsfeld, had a conversation with the soldier. The reporter was mad that Rumsfeld wasn't taking questions from the press, and so the reporter suggested these questions to the soldier, and the soldier asked the questions about lack of armor on vehicles that the reporter wanted to ask, but since Rumsfeld wasn't taking questions, he had no choice, and the journalist who engineered this says, "I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have it, our journey north was delayed just long enough so I could attend a visit today here by Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions, so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts, soldiers. Beforehand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat had."

So the reporter set up Rumsfeld and suggested questions of the soldier. Remember, the soldier did not come up with these questions himself. Had it not been for the reporter the soldier would not have asked these questions. Now, I'm not telling you that I'm clairvoyant or anything of the sort. I just thought there was something about the story, just my instincts, I didn't go with this story yesterday because there's something about this that just struck me as odd. And what struck me odd about this was those of us who have employees, we all have meetings with them and we all let them blow off steam, but we do it in private. This stuff doesn't happen in public and it doesn't happen in the military. The soldier's wife is out there saying (paraphrasing), "Yeah, well, we voted for Bush and we're big gung-ho but it's just my husband. I just can't shut him up. I mean, he's going to ask what he wants to ask." He's a National Guard soldier. But it turns out here--that's what bugged me about this. This just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. You just don't see that kind of near insubordination among rank and file military to the secretary of defense.

I didn't talk about this, and I had no clue what the truth of this was. There was just something about it that rubbed me wrong, and I'm not going to help feed the fire with this because there's something about it. So I was going to work out a bit yesterday. In fact, I brought Snerdley in here, and I said, "You've seen this Rumsfeld story?" He said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Well, I tell you, I want to do something. I want to have a little fun with this today." I said, "At some point I'm going to talk about this story and I'm going to bring you guys in here and say, 'Look, if it's a new policy now that employees have their bitch sessions in public, I'm going to bring you and Dawn and Brian in here and I want you to start complaining about the fact that the ice machine doesn't fill up every day, that you still have to sometimes wait for it, that your new 30-inch computer display monitor hasn't come in yet and you're still slaving away your 23-inch display," seventeen-inch display; sorry, Mr. Snerdley, and Dawn wanted to explain that the dishes in the dining room are not the right shade of white and gold that she ordered, and what are we going to do about it.

All these, you know, crazy complaints, because nobody that works here has any. They don't. (staffers grumbling) You don't have any complaints. (laughing) Mr. Snerdley really wants his 30-inch monitor. Seventeen inches is too small. Yeah, and he needs a high-definition TV. His 30-inch Sony Trinitron is old-fashioned. He was complaining about that to me the other day. So we were going to work this out, just to have fun with this because something about this just struck me as unusual. Well, I'm not sure yet who the reporter is. I'm still waiting on the information on that. I just have the first wave here, if you will, of Drudge exit polling data on this. (Laughing.) He just now splashed it up on his website, and so I wanted to pass this on to you. If you're just joining us, apparently--in fact, this is what the journalist actually wrote: "I just had one of one of my best days as journalist today. As luck would have it our journey north was delayed just long enough so I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of the soldiers along with me as my escort (sort of like an embed reporter here) and beforehand me and the soldiers worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat had."

So it seems safe to assume that had the reporter not be fishing around with the soldiers, that these questions might not have been asked. Now, don't get upset about this, folks. This is just another Dan Rather moment. This is the kind of thing that is happening. It may be a journalistic coup for this guy, but this is not the kind of story that the American people are going to stand up and say all of a sudden we hate Rumsfeld. Now, Maureen Dowd's column today, I think she got her Christmas present. This story was her Christmas present: This soldier standing up and complaining to Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on their vehicles. The first line in her column today, one of the first lines, blah, blah, blah. Well, it's somewhere. I can't find it, but she's just all excited that Rummy got hit. She is just thrilled to death that Rumsfeld got creamed, so she's got her Christmas present now. So it's "Gotcha!" It's gotcha journalism. It's exactly what I said at the beginning of the program. There's still this arrogance. There's still this condescension.

I think I'm with M.L.

Fighting the Wimp Brigade

The LA Times editorial page boldly comes out against the conflict-avoiding extremists who would ban dodgebal and any other competition that separates winners and losers.

We Must Protect This House

In the scrum surrounding Peter Beinart's important article about the future of the Democratic party, one of the lines which has emerged is John Judis's contention that Beinart misunderstands MoveOn.org.

Judis's line was carried even further by the impenetrably smart Mickey Kaus, who informed us that "Michael Moore and MoveOn don't even represent the vast mass of their own followers, let alone of anti-war Democrats."

Now Galley Friend P.H. sends along a link to this story which has excerpts from MoveOn.org email making the rounds. What do the MoveOn types have to say for themselves?

"Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."

Let's see what happens when the votes are counted.

Advise and Consent

After being betrayed by the Sega Dreamcast I'm finally ready to get back on the video game horse. And I need your help. Do I get the PS2, the X-Box, or do I wait for a next-gen system? (And if next-gen, which one?) I've found gaming websites--even the vaunted Gizmodo--unhelpful on this question, so I'm appealing to you. Any and all advice will be much appreciated.

Euphemism of the Day

From the invaluable Lisa de Moraes: "Before Martha left for West Virginia, we promised her we would find the parties who would accomplish this," Lynn said, adding that Stewart is "very pleased."

This is a new program by the Department of Defense to get messages of support out to the troops. Worth a visit.

The Cake Eater Chronicles have moved onto snazzy new Movable Type. Best of luck to Kathy as she figures it all out.

Dude, That Was So Not Me

Fascinated by the report yesterday in the Post that three Texans are suing their sometime acquaintance, the filmmaker Richard Linkletter, who, they say, wrongly appropriated their names and aspects of their high school experience for his pothead classic, Dazed and Confused. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a very smart piece on this problem in the New Yorker recently, discussing a case in which details of a real woman’s life story were, as a court found, wrongly appropriated for a fictional play.

Gladwell observed that what most upset the woman were not the parts of her own story that were put on stage, but the other parts that were not her story. The actual fictional parts, that is, those not taken from her own story. These guys from Texas, too, are upset about things "their" characters do in the movie that they didn’t do in real life.

And yet--as Gladwell observes and many others have remarked in the Texas case--how cool it would be to see your character pilfered a little for a Broadway production or a popular movie. Reminds me of another story. A friend told me about a young author she knew who'd taken up with and then moved in with an older, more established author before writing a novel about a young author who takes up with a more established author and enjoyes some success as a result. My friend's comment to him was that she was really impressed by how he could use his own life to make literature. Oh no, he assured her, the novel was totally fictional.

Denial, you have so many faces.

The Bull Moose has a fittingly nasty post on the Washington Post's story of Rumsfeld in Iraq:

"Mr. Rumsfeld, seemingly caught off guard by the sharp questioning, responded that the military was producing extra armor for Humvees and trucks as fast as possible, but that the soldiers would have to cope with equipment shortages. "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time," he said.

"Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit set to roll into Iraq this week, was the first to step forward, saying that soldiers had had to scrounge through landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called "hillbilly armor" - to bolt to their trucks."

The Moose goes loose, saying:

Rumsfeld went on to explain that pure "physics" is the reason that the troops could not be supplied with sufficient armored vehicles. Pretty neat, huh? Maybe "physics" can replace "the dog ate my homework" as the universal excuse that students give their teachers for uncompleted assignments. Perhaps, in a face saving move, the President can just shift Rumsfeld over to the Education Department where Rummy can apply his novel notions of accountability to the nation's schools - the students will love the lowering of standards.

Dick Meyer has an acidic column that looks like the pain of the scorned sports fan. He dismisses a number of reasons for the outrage about steroids, but misses one which I think is crucial:

If steroids are allowed in sports, they create a barrier-to-entry to aspiring professional athletes that I think society will find unacceptable. But what's worse than that, is that if steroid use becomes legal, that barrier-to-entry will almost certainly slide down from professional sports, to college sports, to high-school sports. You and I may not care whether or not a linebacker from Texas has to take steroids to make the NFL, but we will care if little Jimmy has to take steroids if he wants to make his high school's squad.

Scott Johnson points us to Stuart Taylor's piece about the harmful effects of affirmative action on black lawyers. This could be the beginning of the end for racial preferences.

Help Is on the Way

Hugh Hewitt has an email from a friend of his in the Navy:

The number ONE request at Walter Reed hospital is phone cards. The government doesn't pay long distance phone charges and these wounded soldiers are rationing their calls home. Many will be there throughout the holidays. Really support our troops--Send phone cards of any amount to:

Medical Family Assistance Center
Walter Reed Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001

They say they need an "endless" supply of these--any amount
even $5 is greatly appreciated.

Sounds like an excellent idea.

Hollywood misc.

Galley friend CS just told me about this intriguing ABC Primetime Live segment that ran last Thursday. Basically a softy promo job for the upcoming release of Ocean’s Twelve, it had a couple of very revealing exchanges with the cast.

Andy Garcia on Cuba:

"DIANE SAWYER: (Voice Over) And finally, there's Andy Garcia. He, too, from a loving family but with a searing memory. His father was a wealthy businessman in Cuba, who lost everything under Fidel Castro and was forced to flee to the US. The family, with three children, had to live in a one- bedroom apartment, everything else left behind in Cuba.

"ANDY GARCIA:Part of the thing when you left there was they took everything off of you, you know. I remember specifically, my sister had a -this gold rings on her hand. And she had grown into them and they couldn't get them off her hand. And as a child, I just remember this image of this -going through and these people are dressed in militia uniforms and beards and there's guns everywhere. And they were trying to get this thing off her hand before letting her through. I'm going, "'oh, my God. They're going to cut her hand off.'"

How refreshing to hear from a Hollywooder with serious credentials on Cuba. Take that Oliver Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Glover, and, well, all the rest of them. Here’s the other worthwhile exchange.

Matt Damon on George Bush:

"DIANE SAWYER: In the last election, [Brad] Pitt, [Matt] Damon, [George] Clooney and [Don] Cheadle, openly supported John Kerry. And Damon says, that was going to cost them millions, since Kerry would raise taxes on the rich.

"MATT DAMON: This President is giving me millions of dollars. Do you think I need that? Voting for John Kerry was financially the stupidest thing that we could do, you know. And it was worth it to us because we felt that strongly about the difference that he would have made to the country."


Bragging about your wealth in an effort to show how politically virtuous you are. How gauche!

Man at Work

If you are bothered by the bizarre strain of argument which has arisen to defend steroid use, George Will is a tonic: "Athletes chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued."

Commemorating the Bulge

Next week marks the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Out in bookstores, just in time, is Alex Kershaw's The Longest Winter, the story of one American platoon that faced impossible odds in that struggle and miraculously survived. (It also makes for a terrific holiday gift for history buffs.) I recently reviewed the book in the Wall Street Journal and found it to be almost as good as Kershaw's previous history, The Bedford Boys. It is especially relevant now, with our troops in Iraq, their resolve being tested every day. The Longest Winter is a tribute to that American resolve in times of battle.

FIRE, one of the good guys in watching out for academic freedom, is fighting on behalf of University of Oklahoma professor David Deming:

"Professor Deming has filed a federal lawsuit after OU removed him from his department, stripped him of most of his classes, and moved his office to a converted basement lab, all while claiming to respect the principles of academic freedom.  Public records requests have uncovered damning evidence that OU administrators schemed to marginalize and isolate him for his attempts at whistleblowing and for his political expression."

At least they didn't take his Swingline stapler.