Hunter S. Thompson, Car Talk, And The Power Of The Almost True, Part II

When I was a child I often heard a curious phrase. If someone, perhaps in a game of basketball who narrowly missed a basket, or a fisherman who nearly landed a large fish, said, "Almost!", the common retort was "'Almost' doesn't count except in horseshoes and hand grenades." For the life of me I've no idea of the provenance of this retort, nor do I think I even understand it.

I imagine there are all sorts of things that might be added to that "almost" list of horseshoes and hand grenades; nuclear bombs come to mind, as do certain election tallies. Sadly, there is one thing that has indeed been added to the list: journalism. "Almost," you see, doesn't apparently count, unless you're a journalist. And I guess the same thing can be said of politicians: they are almost honest, and that, apparently, is good enough.

Permit me to quote at length a book review printed in the November 25 edition of the Wall Street Journal (page W3). The Kyle Smith review of Marc Weingarten's The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight reveals much that I think we can learn regarding the authenticity of "New Journalism," that at times gonzo-style reportage from the 1960s and 1970s wherein the "flair of fiction" was brought to "fact pieces" of journalism. Such notables as Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote and Michael Herr pioneered the style.

Despite Mr. Weingarten's reverent tone, close readers may find themselves growing uneasy, if not alarmed, by what he reveals. Mr. Herr, the author of the lauded Vietnam memoir "Dispatches" (1968), wrote his editor that the war "goes deeper than anything my generation has known, even deeper, I'm afraid, than Kennedy's murder. No matter when it ends or how it ends, it will leave a mark on this country like the trail of slime that a sand slug leaves." A valid opinion, possibly. But he wrote those words before he left for Vietnam. Does impartiality matter? Maybe not. New Journalists make their subjectivity part of the show. Does the reference to Kennedy's murder suggest a paranoid streak? Maybe that doesn't matter either.

But three pages later, when Mr. Herr's story about an unidentified general "seen...leaving the house of a famous courtesan" is questioned by his editor at Esquire, Mr. Herr writes back in a huff: "He's fiction–I hoped that that would be obvious." Huh? Yet Esquire editor Harold Hayes "signed off on it," Mr. Weingarten tells us.

What happened here? Did Esquire print these stories with a headline reading: "Warning: some facts not actually true"? How many other fictional elements appeared in the work of Mr. Herr, a man (in Weingarten's words) given to "inventing composite soldiers whose personas were stitched together from what Herr observed during many zonked-out late-night bull sessions over cheap scotch and locally procured marijuana"? Should "Dispatches," which resulted from Mr. Herr's Esquire reporting, be reshelved in the fiction department?

We learn that "composites"–New Journalese for "fictional characters"–appeared regularly in Esquire, whose "best non-fiction writers were pushing their reportage into murky territory where creative interpretation mingled with straight documentation." ...

Hunter S. Thomspon's writing was such a full-on freak-out that it seemed to warn off anyone in search of facts. But when he was attempting to be a semi-serious political analyst, writing for Rolling Stone, there was that troublesome dispatch from 1972 stating–falsely, of course–that Sen. Edward Muskie, then a presidential candidate, was under the influence of a hallucinogen.

Mr. Weingarten reassures us that no one believed Thompson, so no harm was done. But John Burks, a Rolling Stone editor at the time, isn't so sure. "Reporters believed it enough that they asked Muskie about it at press conferences," Mr. Burks told Mr. Weingarten. "Pretty soon he was losing primary after primary." (Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2005)

It is this sort of reporting, this fiction-frames-fact style of journalism, that continues to trouble us today. The 60 Minutes forged documents were a fiction that pointed to an otherwise undemonstrable "fact." And that is just one among many such "factifications" of fiction. President Bush "lied." Well, he "misled." Well, he "manufactured intelligence." Well, he "cherry-picked." However you want to frame it, each of these represent a fiction wrapped around an almost truth.

Here is a pristine example of what I am talking about. Last week, Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha proposed a scale back of American troops in Iraq. He did not call for an immediate withdrawal per se; he did not opine that Americans "cut and run" (though his rhetoric is clearly filled with urgency, including "The US cannot accomplish anything further militarily. It is time to bring them home" and "my plan calls [for] the immediate" redeployment of troops "consistent with the safety of US troops".) [See his speech here.] The following day, you'll recall, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt said during debate on the floor of the House:

A few minutes ago, I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio representative from the 88th District in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message, stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

As one would expect, Democrats were incensed by Ms. Schmidt's remarks. She apologized. And Col. Bubp insisted that she did not accurately report his conversation with Ms. Schmidt. She only got it partly right, but Bubp himself had not suggested that Murtha was a coward.

Then, of course, Democrats fired back, with John Kerry writing to supporters that even House Speaker Dennis Hastert had called Murtha a coward, even though Hastert actually said nothing about cowardice, merely that ''We must not cower like European nations who are now fighting terrorists on their soil."

You see, it is all Babel-speak, a mix of almost truths with a whole lot of mostly mistruths. Even Howard Dean, who emailed me (I'm on the DNC mailing list) yesterday, gets in on the act with this gem:

I saw the video of Republican Jean Schmidt calling decorated combat veteran and Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha a coward. I couldn't believe what I heard. ...

We're following your suggestion to put billboards up in the hometown of any Republican leader trying to distract from their failed leadership by attacking a veteran's service.

Please note what Dean is saying; he's saying an almost truth. Schmidt did not call Murtha a coward; she was stating that to "cut and run" was cowardice, and no one had directly proposed such a thing, nor had anyone begun such a thing. And Schmidt did not attack Murtha's veteran's status, or his military service. She even insists that she did not know Murtha was a Vietnam veteran, even though her ignorance of that fact is irrelevant, since she did not, as Dean insists, attack an American's heroism.

Personally, I am sick of the almost truth. I am grateful that I have the mind and resources to cut through the crap of most of what is posited as fact. But I am afraid that it is all going to get worse, not better. Illusion is everything. Nay, delusion is everything.

"Almost" doesn't count except horseshoes, hand grenades and hell.

It is time for revolution. I will begin today, in my heart.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Hunter S. Thompson, Car Talk, And The Power Of The Almost True, Part I

The other day I spoke with a radio talk show personality, a nationally known figure with a radio gig in Boston. I called him to make a simple point: that those Democrats who take umbrage with the president's intimations that their criticisms of America's war efforts are unpatriotic are guilty of the same sin: they believe the president, the vice president, and the supporters of the war in Iraq are treasonous, devilish, and thoroughly unpatriotic. Bush and Co., after all (or so it goes), are fascist demagogues and Hitlerian; the armed services families who support him are "brainwashed" (Cindy Sheehan's opinion); and the war is "illegal" and not the result of "democratic debate and agreement" but the cause célèbre of neocon machismo rushing headlong into war. While on air I made the further observation that essayists such as Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich are not known for celebrating the president's patriotism, but for doubting and undermining it; and that documentarian (I must be generous) Michael Moore does not print celluloid honoring the president's devotion to his country. If any group questions a person's patriotism, it is the Democrats nattering on about impeachable offenses and "Kool Aid" conformity. "I hate conservatives and everything they stand for" was not uttered by Fidel Castro, but Howard Dean, the Democrats' leading spokesman. To Democrats and their press minions, it is America's conservatives who hate America (which might as well be the motto for the DNC).

But you'll love this: the radio personality agreed with me, as did his cohorts. And they offered that they had never known another time in American history when the country, from one neighbor to the next, was so bitterly divided. But why bother to tell you all this? Because the very next day, the talk show host was right back at it, his agreement with me having lasted but a few minutes, as he fomented umbrage about the unconscionable suggestion by the president that the sensitive Democrats lacked patriotism. It was clear he didn't agree with me at all.

Shift with me, for a moment, to the National Public Radio smash hit, "Car Talk." Surely you've heard of it. It is a call-in talk show wherein two Boston brothers, Bob and Ray (aka Click and Clack), both of whom attended MIT, answer nearly every possible question concerning anything automotive in hilarious fashion. It is a marvelous program. One time, in fact (and I've told this story to many friends with delight), an astronaut on the space shuttle called into the show, while in orbit. Laugh upon laugh, the astronaut also once attended MIT, and had often brought his car for service at the brothers' repair garage in Cambridge. It was a great moment in radio. That is, it was great until I had my own car trouble.

One day, while driving into Boston, I divined that my car acted strangely. I decided to call the Car Talk guys, though I was uncertain when the show was recorded. So I called 1-888-CarTalk on my cellphone, taking a chance on making air time. My surprise? There was an automated voice system asking me my name, the year, make and model of my car; the nature of my problem, my phone number and when would be a convenient time for Car Talk to call me. You see, Car Talk is not call-in, it's call-out: They contact you (and they've already researched the answer). Hence, the astronaut phone call spontaneously dialed from the heavens was a sham.

The reality about radio, particularly talk-radio, is that much more of it is contrived and rehearsed than is first apparent. Call in to any prominent political talk show and you will be asked a series of questions by a screener, who in turn sends your info to the host's laptop computer or through an ear-piece so that he or she can prep for your call, sequeing into it to elicit a set of listener responses. Like David Brooks' observation that newspapers love essays that are "wrong" as they incite strong reactions, so talk-show hosts love fomenting outrage among their listeners. It is good for ratings, and revenues.

This loss of authenticity is truly disconcerting; surely it's been around a long time. But it feels more prevalent to me, though I am perhaps too often prone to delusion. Last year's US elections provided us with the CBS/60 Minutes debacle, where forged documents were posited for our consideration in order to impugn President Bush. When confronted with the facts, CBS took the position that though the documents were forged, they nonetheless pointed to a true fact. The sophistry was clear, though the inauthenticity inherent in CBS's position is damning–damning to us. When news organizations begin to assert known fictions that conveniently point to some presumed, hidden truth, we are damned beyond repair: the end can never be justified without honest means. Otherwise we begin to think that an assertion is identical with evidence. We lose our way, clicking and clacking through the channels in search of a stable place that will set us aright. But we click and clack in vain.

Where does Hunter S. Thompson fit into all this? Tune in tomorrow.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved

Oscar Wilde, Seinfeld, And Peace That Eludes

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all, at least to each of you American readers out there.

I had a truly outstanding conversation the other night, as my wife and I were driving homeward. It was about getting to know people, whether we really ever want to know a person, what he or she really thinks, what he or she really believes. My wife suggested that we don't, for true understanding and intimacy are too difficult, carrying with them responsibilities and obligations. She even suggested that we are afraid to really know another person because then we are forced to choose whether we really like, love, or at least respect that person. It is easy to be superficial, we agreed, because the surface is always safe. Are we not after all afraid of drowning below the fine line between sky and sea?

I am often amazed how thin the line is between civility and incivility. Propriety, mores, etiquette; these are often a cheap veneer concealing real animosity, even, sadly, real hatred. I have attended symposia that give lip service to community and understanding and peace, only to discover that such lip service means getting a fat lip should one question the agenda that drives toward said peace. What is peace, anyway, but a veneer, even an abstraction?

Two Friday nights ago, I attended a concert and poetry reading on the human cost of war. It was a peace vigil, of sorts, complete with a chamber choir that managed to achieve the supernal glory of angels. That the event took place in a Unitarian church full of people that would disagree with me on nearly everything hardly mattered: I thanked the performers and the conductor (a man who had injured me greatly) with all my heart. They achieved something wonderful; and I made my peace with a man who once wounded me deeply.

But in that event I heard two things about peace, two poetic images: One was of a soldier who suggested that each fighter on the battlefied instead should be home cuddling with a loved one beneath silk sheets; the other was a soldier's contemplation of the songs of birds on the edge of the battlefield. Odd that both images, in fact, all images of peace such as these, should bother me. Why? Because they are vapid and untrue. For surely not all men can cuddle beneath silk sheets, since such sheets are the privilege of the wealthy. Besides, not only does some poor sap need to make those sheets, not all men can be coddled, for someone needs to do the coddling. The image of the sheets in fact might be the very sort of image that causes wars, wars between those who have, and those who don't; between the coddled and the coddler; between master and slave. Indeed, I know metaphor, and the metaphor of silk bedding fails to evoke the proper sense of real peace, simply because it neglects the facts of life.

The second image, that of the bucolic and pastoral; of the plangent peel of bells, the lambent light of moon, or the swaying softness of long grasses in the wind; these and many images like them are invoked to elicit a peaceful heart. Look! There is no war in poppy fields, no struggle in winter's solace, no fighting on the edges of heather downs and sylvan streams. Look at the deer, the rabbit, the undulating flight of the pileated across the sun-stained sky!

Alas, any person with a smattering of knowledge knows that there is no peace in a meadow; there is no ease of life for the bird or bloom in the grasses. A deer is rife with stress; even its cousin, the moose, may have in its hocks the leeching mandibles of ten thousand ticks. The struggle of life, of prey and predator, of host and parasite, of disease and cold and wet and heat, that plays out in every single square inch of this planet gives no room for the romanticization of peace. An eagle on a branch is not a symbol of peace, nor is the owl hooting in the night wind. They are looking for victims, and are trying not to be victims themselves. Whatever one might say about the earth, peace is not one of its fundamental qualities. There is not a cell or fleck of soil that is not at war with something.

What then is peace but an abstraction of the mind? Why reify, why make concrete what is forever abstract? Why do we see peace in a calm sea, when we know that the ocean's surface conceals a violent surge of fin and fang?

***

You might recall a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry has a transformation, a sort of born-again experience. He is the new Jerry, the good Jerry. At one point, the new Jerry and George, his best friend, sit down for a heart-to-heart, with Jerry urging George to open up, to be vulnerable with his feelings. Later, when the camera returns to the scene, we find George on the edge of grateful tears and Jerry on the far edge of the couch, a look of horror on his face. He stands up, backs away, and says "Well, good luck with all that." In a moment of honest confession, Jerry gets to know his friend as he truly is, and he rejects him, put off by the enormity of the responsibility of intimacy: George's struggles would weigh him down, and Jerry is scared straight back into superficiality.

Oscar Wilde, a man imprisoned for his homosexuality and one of my emerging literary heroes (though not for that reason), wrote from Reading Gaol (where he served his sentence) that the "supreme vice is shallowness." Is he right? I think he might be. For we humans are shallow about what peace is, what it looks like, where it's found. We are shallow even about love, what it means, what it requires: sacrifice, grace, understanding, the carrying of burdens and the confronting of sin and its consequences, and the confronting of the sinful machinations erected to conceal human brokenness and guilt. It is easier if there is no sin, no guilt, no deep dark unknown beneath the veneer of our daily lives. It is easier for us if a loved one who ignores our warnings crashes to the ground and bounces up, like so many little children do, and declares "I'm alright!" It is easier particularly when we know that our loved one is not alright at all.

Someday, somewhere, I will learn how to live below the surfaces I polish daily.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

That Glorious Strength: Rumors Of Angels

Today I give thanks, though not in a holiday sense. I will wait two days for that fine American celebration. Instead, I give thanks for a man who died 42 years ago today, in England, his death overshadowed by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Odd that this man, along with Kennedy and the great humanist Aldous Huxley, would have died within hours of each other.

I am talking of C. S. Lewis. No other person of letters, I believe, has had a more profound impact on my life, even if I admit that there are other writers and thinkers I prefer. For it was Lewis who set me on my way, speaking to both heart and mind; emboldening me to live a life where faith and reason, where mysticism and intelligence, are not exclusive one to another, but two sides of one glorious and mysterious coin. In him I met Christ the thinker, the poet; the creator. In him I met the Christian imagination with all its possibilities: Narnia, Ungit, Perelandra, the pantheon, and even Middle Earth. Hobbits came to life for me, largely because of Lewis' love and support of his best friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, and both men's unwavering devotion to the ancient creeds of Christendom.

And in the wake which Lewis left in my life, I fell on St. Francis and St. Thomas, George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, E. C. Bentley, Owen Barfield, Sheldon Vanauken, Thomas Howard, Peter Kreeft, Grady Spires (an unpublished elvish genius), T. S. Eliot (whose work Lewis abhorred), Charles Williams, Malcolm Muggeridge, Madelyn L'Engle, and even Annie Dillard. Though there might not be a causal chain between these writers' works and Lewis, there is indeed a causal chain between Lewis and my reading them, for he inspired me to be a thinking Christian, and I am all the better for that chain, and for that inspiration. And had not Lewis' books found their way into my life, I doubt that I would know of John Donne, Thomas Traherne, George Herbert, or even William Butler Yeats. And I am not afraid to say that I might even be dead now without the influence of Lewis' testimony.

This is neither idolatry, nor is it gratuitous beatification. Lewis is my mentor. He has, along with Christ, preached to me in prison; he has descended into hell and handed me a tiny silken thread, the very thread he found in the dark and venomous mines described in MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin." I hold that thread now, standing, as I so often do, in the deep and chilly dark.

Before this day began I was reading Peter L. Berger's A Rumor of Angels, a famous little book written by the lauded sociologist from Boston University. In his examination of the death of the supernatural in modern society, and the apparent death of God, Berger shared this anecdote:

"A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, "So that the rumor of God may not disappear completely." [emphasis added]

Lewis could have been that priest, for surely he worked in the slums of so many forsaken and forsakeable ideas. Lord knows he worked in mine. And in small homage to him, I do the same, here and elsewhere, trying to keep rumors alive.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The Delusion And The Beast

" A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
yea, a sick cloud on the soul when we were boys together." –G. K. Chesterton

There is indeed a cloud on the mind of men, and it is getting darker as I write. There appears to be no clearing in the forecast; no fair weather any time soon.

How do we reconcile this statement made by Massachusett's senior senator, Edward Kennedy, with the current climate in Washington? Kennedy said on September 27, 2002 (please note the date):

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

What does "known for many years" mean? What does "known" mean? How many is "many"? For sorrow, I cannot ascertain what Mr. Kennedy means. But I would guess that he means that the United States and all reasonable people, with Mr. Kennedy counted among them, KNEW that Saddam Hussein was "seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And I would think that Mr. Kennedy believes that "many years" means that this knowledge preceded President Bush's arrival in office, since Mr. Kennedy articulated his convictions only a year-and-a-half into Bush's nascent presidency.

Now, compare the above quote with Kennedy's newest convictions (from Saturday, November 11, with CNN's Wolf Blitzer):

"The fact is, we have known that Saddam Hussein was a -- a tyrant. We know he was a threat. The real issue, was he an imminent threat to the United States? The president never could have carried the vote in the United States Senate unless he represented that there was an imminent threat to the United States, because Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons or he was right in the proximity of developing it, and, secondly, that he had close associations with al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission has dismissed the al Qaeda connection. And the various weapons inspectors have dismissed the -- the other claim. But Americans believed the president, because, I think, the great confidence that they had in his word after the -- 9/11."

Before I begin a brief response to this Kennedy puzzler, let me make one revelation: Everyone who reads Contratimes is smarter than Mr. Kennedy.

In reply to Mr. Kennedy, let us first point out that President Bush never described Saddam Hussein as an "imminent threat." In fact, the only person on record to have said such a thing with alarm and passion was Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller, who is now a critic of the war's genesis. I implore you to read this speech by Mr. Rockefeller from 2002 (wherein he also connects 9/11 and the assault on Hussein). President Bush's position was that the United States needed to deal with Hussein before he became an imminent threat.

Second, once again we return to the mundane truth. Actually, we've returned to this truth so often that there are signs this webpage is eroding. The 9/11 Commission DID NOT "dismiss" the idea that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, only that there was no collaborative connection. That's pretty simple. And we are smart enough, unlike Mr. Kennedy (I have to tease his IQ; otherwise I would have to call him a liar), to know the difference.

There is a cloud on the mind of men.

Third, I refer readers to this post I wrote a few weeks ago. Therein I prove, again, that the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror was made such, not by neoconservative fascists, but by Osama bin Laden himself. Really, it is amazing how few people realize this. Even today, I listened to Bill O'Reilly struggle through his labyrinthian explanation connecting Iraq, Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden. But the reason Iraq is central is not obscure. In fact, it is one of the clearest facts about the war.

BILL CLINTON FOR WORLD PRESIDENT, AND THE BEAST

Contratimes readers might like to know that Esquire magazine declared Bill Clinton the most influential man on the planet (to hit newsstands in its December issue). In fact, one Esquire editor suggested that Clinton could easily be the world's president. But that title might not come easy. U2's Bono declared that Nelson Mandela was the "world's president" during a concert in South Africa last year. So perhaps we might see an apocalyptic battle for top dog in the no-too-distant future between the two men. But I give the upper hand to Mandela. Why? Well, let me put it this way: I find it just a wee bit unnerving that the ostensibly Christian Bono would so highly praise Mandela, considering that Mandela's prison identification number was 46664. Even if Mandela is NOT the beast of the Apocalypse, one would think a Christian like Bono would be more circumspect of a man whose very foundation is called "46664." Seriously, it's even a bit scary linking to that site for some folks, I imagine.

Anyhow, perhaps Clinton and Mandela are the False Prophet and The Beast; perhaps not. Nevertheless, there is a cloud on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather.

Contratimes

Atlas Shrugged A Long Time Ago

Here are just a few tidbits too tasty not to share with each of you.

First, remember Michael Moore, you know, that "brilliant" film-maker who last blessed us with Fahrenheit 9/11? Well, those of us who watched that film will recall that the Bogeyman Dick Cheney and his minions at Halliburton were revealed to us by Mr. Moore in all their gory details: they are capitalist, expansionist, warmongering, profitmongering pigs (and that's to praise them, at least in Moore's world). We also recall Moore positing that the war on Iraq was all about guaranteeing for Halliburton numerous "no bid contracts" (there is no one else who COULD bid on those contracts, since no one else does what Halliburton does. Ahh, but who cares about that?). But shame, shame, shame on that evil corporate behemoth.

And yet as luck would have it, a magic trick of the first kind: Abacadabra and presto!

You see, Michael Moore recently sold his Halliburton stock, all 2000 shares.

"According to IRS filings, Moore sold Halliburton for a 15 percent profit and bought shares in Noble, Ford, General Electric (another defense contractor), AOL Time Warner (evil corporate media) and McDonald's."

For more on this whole devilish tale, go here. Really, this is sweet, especially since Moore wrote that he does not own a "single share of stock."

But I shouldn't gloat. Countless people have been sucked into Moore's money-making schemes. He sees a market, rushes a film through production to profit from it, and laughs his way to the Hall of Legends. For that is what Moore did in Fahrenheit: he exploited real people's real doubts and fears about the war in Iraq and President Bush for his personal gain. What is sad, saddest of all, is that the most casual viewing of Moore's films reveals his indifference to truth. Thus, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe him. He is, really, the epitome of the CBS creed: "The documents may be forged but they at least point to a true story." It is the end, whatever end, justifying any means. Truth, accuracy, honesty be damned. What matters is the affirmation of feeling, and a decent profit.

Second, and in continuation of my riff Comfortably Numb from Monday, I note that the second richest man in the world, the Democrat Warren Buffett, is featured on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal's "Weekend Edition" (November 12-13, 2005). (Mindful readers will recall that Mr. Buffett was tapped by John Kerry to be his economic advisor.) Here's a great quote:

"Mr. Buffett, with a personal net worth of $43 billion ... calculates that since 1951, he has generated an average annual return of about 31%. The average return for the Standard & Poor's 500 over that period is 11% a year. A $1000 investment in Berkshire [Buffett's firm] in 1965 would be worth about $5.5 million today. ... Berkshire's Class A shares closed yesterday at $90,500."

Hmmm. Sounds to me like there needs to be a subcommittee formed on Capitol Hill. Someone needs to be investigated. Heaven knows all that profit could be given to someone else, like Michael Moore, for instance. Plus, in the process perhaps we'll find out what the profit margin was for Fahrenheit 9/11, or for the new Wal-Mart documentary (bashing Wal-Mart, for you investors, is the newest fad, so you should invest smartly in those groups that will exploit that dynamic market).

(Ayn Rand was right!)

Contratimes

Comfortably Numb

They have called it a quagmire. They have referred to the country as lost in chaos; anarchic; on the threshold of civil war. They have called the Bush administration's efforts to democratize 'futile' and 'naive', so much wishful thinking. They have tossed around words like 'partitioning', and they've talked about the 'unsuspected power of insurgency.'

Odd, don't you think, that a country apparently so lost, so forsaken and unmanageable; a country so steeped in chaos and pain and anarchy, nonetheless manages to elect interim governments, draft and approve legislation, and hold successful elections? Odd, isn't it, to hear critics claim that Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites don't want democracy, have never wanted it; have resented it being forced upon them, and yet they turn out to convene and petition and vote, all the while facing threats of death and mayhem daily? Odd that the insurgency with all its apparent might has failed to deter democracy?

Iraq. It is an odd thing indeed.

Never before have I heard the party of tolerance remain so dogged in their abuse of a people. For the Democratic Party, composed ostensibly of those who claim to see the best in people, nevertheless have a dour, dire and pessimistic view of the Iraqi people; that the Iraqis cannot and will not govern themselves democratically, and that they will devolve into warring tribalists the second America stops propping them up. So much for beneficence. So much for a party of hope, or hope for a party. This is the party-pooping party, if you think about it.

I once wrote that the insurgency in Iraq was puny, and I remain defiant. It is puny. Its success is hardly success; and its strength can only be described in terms of weakness, impotence, detumescence. There is nothing turgid there; there is nothing awesome or fearsome; there is nothing standing tall. It is a mere kicking of the shins; it is a flailing of flaccid arms.

But I've been known to be wrong. Odd, don't you think, that there are people who hope I am wrong; who hope the insurgency is bigger, badder, better? But what could be odder than that these same people are Americans, Americans who act as if they want the insurgency to be massive and competent? It's a crazy time indeed.

Go, patriots!

***

Last week the most fair-minded among us gathered in rooms in Washington to investigate profits. Not just any profits: not the profits of wedding photographers or tort lawyers or movie-makers or doctors; but the profits of "BIG OIL." You know, those bad guys at ExxonMobil, for example, who made $10,000,000,000 in profits over the last three months of this year. Anyhow, far be it from me to point out, as Ron Insanta has done with erudition, that Exxon's sales for the quarter A) were worldwide and B) totaled more than $100,000,000,000; and thus the profit margin was a mere ten percent, far below most industries and far below most credit card companies (apparently). Of course, no one else is being dragged into the Capital for hearings, for full disclosures, though the companies by law must produce transparent ledgers, which they have. And far be it from me to point out that Exxon investors have experienced a 9% return, which is hardly the highest on the planet and is, apparently, finally one of the highest in Exxon history. And far be it from me to point out that Exxon, a colossus who has clients the world over, did not make $10 billion in profit JUST FROM SALES IN AMERICA.

Why should I bother with this? Simple. The predators in Congress, with Democrat Dennis Kucinich leading the way, want to dip into Exxon's profits to distribute, where? You guessed it: Only in America. You see, these hearings are only important if someone can exploit the naivete of people (most Americans are economic idiots), raise their ire, and press companies to be embarrassed for their worldwide successes, shaming them into economic concessions. Of course, Congress, at least those congressmen with a socialist bent, want to distribute the money gained, not to African families or Nicaraguan schools (all of which allegedly have been "gouged" by big oil), they want to give it to Americans. As if America is the center of the economic world.

Here's a little news item (from the Wall Street Journal, Friday Nov. 11): Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, "a large private-equity firm" he co-founded in 1985, is in contract to sell his home in South Hampton, New York. He bought the property 13 years ago for $4 million. As of right now, he is set to sell the property for MORE than his asking price of $42 million. The 15.8 acre Long Island property with 291 feet of ocean frontage sits in a tony section of the country where property values have tripled in the last five years. But Schwarzman's profit is far more than triple his investment. So I can only conclude one thing: Congress needs to investigate. But, alas. Schwarzman is, among other things, the chairman of the Board of Trustess of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. I doubt Congress will be holding real estate hearings any time soon.

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The Je Ne Sais Quoi Of Chaos

I don't remember the exact place, but I remember the conversation. I was standing with an Anglican priest in either Hastings or Brighton, England. It was April 1986. We were on the curb of a small street that ran at an odd angle through town. And I said to him that I was thinking of getting a PhD in Islamic studies instead of entering the ministry.

The priest looked at me quizzically.

"I can't imagine why you'd consider that," he said.

"My reasons are complex," I replied, "but the obvious reason is that I believe the single biggest threat the West faces is not from the Soviet Union, but from Islam. And not just the West's political structures, but also the Western church; both are under seige."

Odd that I recall my priest friend dismissing me as somewhat uncouth, even philistine. My interest in Islam, and my concerns about it, were insufficiently elegant for my interlocuter's impeccable tastes. The conversation ended awkwardly and abruptly.

***

Yesterday, while listening to The New Yorker writer George Packer on Public Radio's Here and Now, I heard a curious thing. Mr. Packer, author of the book, The Assassins' Gate, and a self-described liberal hawk who supported the Iraq War, posited for our rumination the following summary of a war he now criticizes. He shared that immediately after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq plunged into chaos, which no one predicted, nor for which anyone prepared. Mr. Packer (elsewhere) also described Iraq as anarchic (which is hard to jive with the demonstration of unimpeachable civility in last month's Iraqi elections).

My point in highlighting Mr. Packer's remarks has little to do with his abuse of the words "chaos" and "anarchy." I suppose I could point out that "chaos" is "complete disorder and confusion" and "anarchy" is the "disorder caused by a loss of authority." And I suppose I could also point out that the US military controlled every square inch of Iraq, albeit with difficulty in 5 percent of the country, in a few short days. Chaos would suggest riots and looting and protests everywhere unending, with troops scrambling to control air space, commerce, transportation, communication. But no such scrambling was necessary because so little of the country was indeed plunged into chaos.

But what is plunging into chaos is France. The riots there, not just the recent ones (there have been problems all year, with 29,000 cars burned since the beginning of the year [Theodore Dalrymple, Wall Street Journal, 11/7/05]). If Iraq is chaotic and anarchic, what is Clichy-Sous-Bois, festive and spirited? And if anyone continues to believe that Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans combined to reveal a despicable fact about the American Dream, France's own poverty issue is now plain to see, and clearly far worse than the American South's. In Vichy-Sous-Bois the Wall Street Journal reports that among 15 to 29-year-olds who are foreign born, that district's unemployment rate is 40%; while one analyst on Fox News last night said that parts of France have a 60% unemployment rate. Granted the welfare state of France has propped these folks up fairly well, though the projects in which the rioting folks reside are referred to as "chicken coops," a euphemism which surely does little to bolster French esprit de corps.

Yes, the violence in France is not "inherently Muslim", as the WSJ aptly reports. But there is a lot of Islamic rhetoric flying about the whole scene, and Muslim clerics are touting themselves as the only effective pacifiers in the 12-day-old struggle. But even those Muslim groups which seem to help soothe the rioters are viewed by some French officials as political opportunists seeking to prove their indispensibility to French governance. If all this is not chaos, chaos is at least knocking at the door.

I am in no way suggesting that France's struggle proves that America has no poverty problem, nor am I suggesting that France's nightly chaos proves that Iraq is going well. What I am saying is that when extreme language is used by critics such as Mr. Packer, there is no language left to describe similar, even more horrific struggles. And what I am also saying is that the West is under siege.

Look, this is my take on Western Europe's reluctance to support the Iraq War. Those countries such as France and Germany, which have large Muslim populations, at no point could support a military action in Iraq, or in any Muslim country, for that matter. Even much of the corruption in the Oil-For-Food scandal with the UN was perhaps partly motivated by a desire to appear less harsh (than America and Britain) on a Muslim country in an effort to appease the millions of Muslims living inside France. Just look at what happened in England and Spain when Islamic judgment was meted out for English and Spanish cooperation in the Iraq War. France was not ready, it is still not ready, to truly face the issue of accepting hostile immigrants who refuse and even oppose assimilation; who set up Muslim enclaves within France's borders. The struggle is hardly near reaching its zenith, I am afraid. And it is a struggle that is not confined to France.

***

I was wrong, partly, when I stood on the curb in England, my priest acquaintance rapidly losing interest in my conversation. The Church's biggest threat is not from Mohammed, though he is far less friend than foe. The Church's threat is from deep within itself as it attempts to appease the zeitgeist. And the West's political structures are also threatened from within; but perhaps from no less a threat than those westerners who find a political friend in Islamic militancy. For many of the critics of the West, Islam has provided a springboard and an excuse for their criticism. But it will be interesting to see whether, before it's too late, the West's critics recognize that their ally is more foe than friend.

Contratimes

The New Alchemist: The Pundit Who Makes Gold From Nothing

This morning I emailed someone unknown to me, and in that brief correspondence I mentioned the speculation industry. No, this is not that industry wherein investors risk capital on dubious projects; nor is it the industry of psychics lifting dark veils off of even darker futures. I'm talking about the industry of punditry, specifically that punditry built entirely around speculation; around auguring through the clutter and veneer of political life and deciphering what was, is, and is to come, with Ivy League clairvoyance. And it is no small fact that this industry is about money, about lots of money. No small fortune can be had if one speculates with aplomb and just the right touch (and no doubt with a good agent and publisher). Secret motives, hidden agendas, abstruse conspiracies, encrypted memos in plain language–these are the fodder for the fomenting oracles.

In his very readable and often brilliant little book, Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks, commenting on the promotion of one's intellectual capital for financial gain, observes the intellectual essayist intent on getting published:

"To get the most attention, the essay should be wrong. Logical essays are read and understood. But an illogical or wrong essay will prompt dozens of other writers to rise and respond, thus giving the author mounds of publicity. Yale professor Paul Kennedy had a distinguished but unglamorous career under his belt when he wrote The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, predicting American decline. He was wrong, and hundreds of other commentators rose to say so, thus making him famous and turning his book into a bestseller. Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay called 'The End of History,' which seemed wrong to people who read only the title. Thousands of essayists wrote pieces pointing out that history had not ended, and Fukuyama became a global sensation."

Irrespective of Brooks' cynicism, which I take as proof of his vivacity, his comments invite me to speculate about those who speculate. Is it possible that people intentionally mislead merely for self-aggrandizement? Is it possible that people play the devil's advocate for devilish financial gain and notoriety?

Much of me says that it must be so. I cannot believe that Noam Chomsky, speculator par excellence, believes what comes forth from his mouth, not when his gnosticism collapses before evidence and reasons to the contrary of whatever it is he asserts. Does filmmaker Michael Moore, who is Chomsky-esque in his style, really believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy between the Bush family and the Saudis?

Such mendacity reminds me of a Seinfeld character, that man who would make an absurd wager with women solely so he could lose the bet, and yet win a date. "If I am wrong that Dustin Hoffman was a male lead in Star Wars, I'll buy you dinner," he'd say, which was a ruse for actually asking the woman out for dinner directly. It was a lose/win, win/win situation for the man every time.

We know that people seek gain, much of it financial but often political, by stating untruths that sound so very true. For instance, when Howard Dean ran for president last year he did so touting that he was the ONLY Washington outsider, a mere Vermonter living among dairymen, who was running for president. Curiously, Dean the Outsider not only could tell exactly what cabal was being formed in the Oval Office, he knew with certainty the very motives of President Bush's heart. Amazingly Dean gained traction with his wizard's talents, though he could have no unique vision from Montpelier. The consummate outsider that Dean was cannot have an insider's view. If he does, well, then he is just another insider (that truly untenable conclusion logic reaches so easily).

Bu what we don't know, though Brooks opens our eyes to its possibility, is whether people intentionally mislead solely to exploit a market, through book sales and speaking engagements, merely to get wealthy. Is there such a conspiracy?

(It is interesting to note that Noam Chomsky, the anti-capitalist ultra-leftist, has a $1.2 million vacation home in Wellfleet, a desirable and well-to-do town on Cape Cod. See this piece for more information on Mr. Chomsky's speculations. As Brooks says elsewhere in his book: "Intellectual life is a mixture of careerism and altruism ... the ... intellectual reconciles the quest for knowledge with the quest for the summer house.")

How is it that we permit these folks, on right and left–yes, even conservative Mr. Brooks–to make great career gains through pontificating on the unknowable? If an indictment is sealed, why do we care what Susan Estrich or Dick Morris think about what cannot be known? If we are a people committed to reason, logic and facts, why do we countenance the speculators profiting from our need to know, or even our need to win? Their only product is to offer what they know, which is nothing, in words that sound as if they might indeed know something.

Perhaps one final example will suffice. You've heard constant "analysis" and speculation about the alleged leak of a CIA operative's name. You have heard about why the Bush White House committed this heinous crime (though most people believe that no crime could have been committed when no law was broken); that Bush and Co. did this as payback, to defame a man, Joseph Wilson, who was critical of White House policies. But did you know that according to Friday's Wall Street Journal, Robert Novak, the first reporter to print the name of Valerie Plame (the alleged operative), called the CIA before going to press? Did you know that the CIA confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed work for the CIA? And did you know that it was common knowledge in Washington, even listed in Who's Who, that Ms. Plame was Morris' wife? And did you know that the CIA, when contacted by Mr. Novak, could have invoked a Do-Not-Publish position and chose not to?

(FYI: The Thursday and Friday op-ed pages of the WSJ are award-winning excellent regarding this whole affair.)

But alas, what do we get ad infinitum? We get speculation about a corrupt White House, with some suggesting that this is the most corrupt White House in history, when in fact a deep examination of the facts points to corruption at the CIA.

All this to say that profit is to be found everywhere, even among bad prophets.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The President, Fox News, And Death

In Malcolm Gladwell's wonderful new book, Blink, he shares a word-test used in psychological research. When a subject is given several sets of words and is asked to remove the odd, unrelated word from each set, a curious thing happens. If the words removed are something like this––grey, Florida, retirement, mortality, funeral–– the subject responds differently than if the words have nothing to do with the unhappy facts of aging and death. Unknown to the subject, the subject's walking pace has been measured since he or she entered the research clinic. When the subject takes the test with the mortality-laced words, that subject walks away slower from the test than a person who takes a test emphasizing something happy.

Hence, it can be safely said that words affect impressions and moods and even behaviors.

Permit me to jump from psychology to news. I want to refresh your memory about the collective gasp heard when Democrats lost last year's presidential election. What was heard in that gasp? Among other things, there were criticisms of the power of talk-radio and Fox News. In fact, John Kerry listed these things in a post-election statement he gave to his supporters. You see, to Democrats, both radio hosts and Fox News worked to undermine democracy, working as mouthpieces for the Republican machinery. Even Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 jabbed at Fox with all the pre-election force he could muster.

Today, please note a strange fact. Fox News and talk radio are as strong as ever, and presumably, as partisan as ever. As many if not more people as last year are tuning in to these media services. Scoffing and mockery have not stopped among the leftist critics of these apparently right-wing behemoths. And yet, never in the history of American polling has a president's approval rating been so low. How, pray tell, can this be, if the United States electorate is blindly controlled by a partisan media machine? From where have Americans been getting their deep and allegedly trenchant insights into the presidency, if not from the allegedly pro-Bush Fox News, the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, and the talking mouths that tickle our ears from their radio towers? If the Republicans could so effectively control what people think last year, how have they failed so miserably this year? What has changed?

Perhaps nothing has changed, though that this is an off-election year is a major factor. So, too, are high fuel prices a powerful factor in shaping perception. And Bush is a lame duck, which is no small thing.

But there might be another factor: pyschological manipulation. Here is something I learned from Fox News, which provides us with a powerful example of psychological warfare. Read this brief submitted by Fox's Brit Hume:

Burying the Lead?

Nearly 79 percent of Iraqis voted to adopt the country's new constitution, but you might not know it from reading the Associated Press report on the election. The first paragraph notes that Sunnis are already calling the vote "a farce." In the second paragraph, the AP reports that two more U.S. Marines were killed in Baghdad last week.

The story then speculates that the victory could fuel the insurgency and reports on several more acts of violence across the country since the election. The AP finally points out the constitution's overwhelming margin of victory in paragraph 27.

Why would the Associated Press do this? Why would it choose to highlight what was not the news for a particular weekend, you know, that historic weekend two weeks ago when Iraqis approved the new constitution nearly 4 to 1? Was the AP trying to affect your psyche, to control your behavior, to make you walk more slowly? I think so.

I am not afraid to admit that this sort of language manipulation is common to all news sources and political parties. I concede that it is hard to trust what one hears and reads. Scepticism cannot be used too frequently, I'm afraid. But when the mass of the media constantly drip and drip and drip information that is not entirely true, or that is shaped or colored in order not to inform you but to change you and the world (journalists are not above the messianic impulse), you need more than scepticism. You need intellectual vigor, even a pugnacious spirit, to strip the skin of deception down to the bone of truth.

Here's another great brief from Hume:

Reasons for Ratings?

A new CBS poll (search) shows the president's job approval rating has hit an all time low of 35 percent and 68 percent of respondents tell CBS that the country is on the wrong track. CBS cites the Iraq war, the Libby indictment, and the response to Hurricane Katrina (search) as reasons for the decline, but the poll's weighted sample may be more telling.

Twenty-eight percent of those polled identified themselves as Republicans, compared to 35 percent who said they were Democrats. But CBS dropped the importance of Republican responses even further weighting the sample so that Republican responses counted for only 24 percent of the final results. Thirty-seven percent of voters in last year's election called themselves Republicans, while 37 percent said they were Democrats, and 26 percent called themselves Independents.

Is this the sort of reporting by Fox News so disdained by the left? It sure could be. It sure should be.

But my overall point is this: Don't let anyone, including me, force you to walk slower, unless it is the truth that slows you down.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.