Weeping, Bleeding, And The Gnashing Of Teeth

It would be easy to conclude from my posts this week that I believe Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace was the week's big story. It was no such thing. The week's big story was the horrific assault on children that occurred in a Colorado high school. That hideous and unimaginable event, that act of domestic terrorism and sexual perversion, is enough to bring down fire and brimstone upon a complacent world. One shudders to think what happened in that Platte Canyon High School classroom.

It's a good thing I am not God.

Predictable Cliché: Clinton And Wallace Smirking To Gomorrah

The Clinton/Wallace conflict, so to speak, clearly became the hot item over the past few days. Clinton critics and supporters alike found something to love -- and hate -- in the interview; all kinds of talking heads have since been rolled out and given the podium. Everyone has something to say. Howard Dean and John Kerry have heard the clarion call from their former commander-in-chief; Bill Clinton, according to both men, has shown the sort of courage we have come to expect of him, courage seasoned with passion, eloquence and brilliance. Less infatuated folks have pondered whether Mr. Clinton is rather less than stable; seemingly unhinged, the president exploded on camera (though duly repressing his rage with that charming smile), poking his finger at Mr. Wallace, even touching him. To those on the left, Clinton told the truth in a powerful way; to those on the right, Clinton's turgid posturing was naught more than a desperate attempt at maintaining illusions of grandeur: he was far more detumescent than tumescent, if you get my drift.

I have since come to doubt my conviction that the president knew what he was doing. Many shrewd pundits have made me doubt my own suspicion; I realize that I may be trapped by stereotype, basing my suspicions solely on the undoubtedly inflated idea that Mr. Clinton is a monumental mythomaniac, a pathological confabulator. Former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, who is so shrewd he might actually be directly tapped into the Dark Side, noted two things about his former boss and friend; first, that the strength and vigor of any Clinton denial is directly proportional to the veracity of the charge; second, that Democrats cannot be happy in any possible way that the country is now scrutinizing the Clinton administration's handling of terror. One recollection of Mr. Clinton's denial of his affair with Monica Lewinsky seems to prove Mr. Morris' first observation, since Clinton's adamantine certainty that he was not involved "with that woman" proved to be not so adamantine; the only unbreakable fact was the overwhelming truth. And now, as voters and journalists and bloggers pore over the 9/11 Commission Report, the Clinton record, the apparently infallible book by Richard Clarke, and the transcripts of countless news interviews, the Democratic Party cannot be happy; micro-examining the Clinton record will not be good for any DNC blustering about their party's alleged strong stance on terror.

I wonder about it all though. I wonder whether it was wise for Mr. Wallace to begin his "conservative hit job" (Clinton's words) by blaming the question on Fox News viewers who had emailed Wallace a particular question. That Mr. Wallace seems to be protecting himself here, with a "don't blame the messenger" sort of alibi, strikes me as bad journalism; besides, that sort of introduction to such an important question suggests Fox News cows to what sounds like a right-wing audience. And it feeds the left's long-held stereotype that Fox News is the Pravda of right-wing radicalism.

Moreover, if Fox News is going to shape interviews based on viewer suggestions gathered via email, then one might ask whether it is possible that such emails are not actually coming from fans of Fox News. Surely it is possible that the emails were NOT from Fox Fans at all; perhaps certain Clinton supporters inundated the in-boxes of Mr. Wallace's producers solely to steer the interview in a premeditated way. I am not saying this happened; I am saying that it COULD happen, and it could happen rather easily.

One thing, however, that stands out to me is something I've already noted: that Mr. Clinton reframed the question that Mr. Wallace actually asked. Recall with me that Mr. Clinton agreed with Mr. Wallace that the question asked was a "legitimate question". Also recall that Mr. Clinton then claimed the question was framed dishonestly, that Mr. Wallace accused the president of "giving aid and comfort" to Mr. bin Laden. And then recall that Mr. Wallace did no such thing.

How is it that the president could have misrepresented the question so egregiously? Is it that he wanted to deceive the audience, arguing against a falsehood that he himself created? Or was he already primed for the debate? Had he been brooding on this sort of issue for a long time; was he ready to pounce, and thus -- all too ready -- pounced on a question that was not actually asked? Or was this just a sign of his instability and gross self-absorption; was this all a desperate effort at maintaining the Clinton legacy? Who knows.

ANDY ROONEY ON CLICHÉ

Moments ago, on the Imus in the Morning radio program, CBS News essayist Andy Rooney let us all know that he hates clichés. It is reassuring to hear him speak so candidly; I am concerned that he is rather commonly prosaic. His announcement was given to highlight his astute analysis of the Clinton/Wallace interview. For he shared the following, some of which is a paraphrase and some of which is a direct quote (I am listening to Imus as I write this).

When asked by Imus whether he had seen the interview and what, if anything, he thought about it, Mr. Rooney, that sage of satire, told listeners that he had indeed seen the interview but could not undertand "why it’s such a big deal." He said that anytime someone begins a question with a cliché like "I realize hindsight is 20/20", as Mr. Wallace framed his question, Mr. Rooney could not take it seriously. "I sort of tuned out after that," he announced.

But when Imus mentioned that Mr. Wallace had based his question on email from Fox News viewers, Mr. Rooney offered this telling admission: "I didn’t hear that." What's fascinating is this is the exact thing Mr. Rooney should have heard, since it was the VERY THING with which Mr. Wallace began the question. Chris Wallace's 185-word question did not begin with a cliché at all. In fact, the alleged cliché came at word number 162; the cliché actually ended the question. Moreover, if Rooney had actually HEARD the question, then he would have known that it began with the reference to Fox viewers' emails.

What then, shall we conclude about Mr. Rooney's attentiveness? Was he lying when he said that he had listened to the interview? Was he lying when he said he had "tuned out after that"? Would it be at all irresponsible to suspect that Mr. Rooney's dismissiveness was a mere signal to his fans that they should be equally dismissive; that this was all a mere clichéd and predictable aspect of Fox News' and we all should just forget about it? One wonders.

But one need not wonder about Mr. Rooney's well-cast pox on all things cliché and trite. He transcends that sort of thing. Just look at the following attributed to Mr. Rooney's pen:

Taxes are important. President Bush's tax proposals leave no rich person behind. Voters approve of President Bush helping the kind of people they wish they were one of.

I am glad Mr. Rooney makes such fresh observations. Otherwise we all might begin to suspect that Mr. Rooney is really rather stale. But it is at least good for us that we are not prone to his sort of tuning out. We stay tuned-in just long enough to get the point.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Chris Wallace, Fox News, 9/11 Commission, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, The Path To 9/11, Richard Clarke, smirk, wag the dog, Andy Rooney, Dick Morris, Imus in the Morning, Imus

Wipe That Smirk Off Your Face: Bill Clinton All Over Chris Wallace

During this hour of the day, Boston-area listeners are assaulted by the anemic-duo of talk-radio known as Eagan and Braude. Moments ago they were simply slap-happy with glee at the "unbelievable" performance of Bill Clinton against that evil arch-nemesis, Fox News incarnate in Chris Wallace. To Mr. Braude, Mr. Wallace was squirming; to Ms. Eagan, Wallace was a wussy.

But if squirming is measured in sheer movement, then the fact is clear that the person who moved the most during yesterday's immortal interview was Mr. Clinton. Moreover, it would be wrong to say, as Eagan and Braude suggest, that Mr. Wallace somehow cowered in fear or was at all weak. Only a bad journalist would not see that Mr. Wallace was sitting there thinking only one thing: "My God, this is going to be an awesome, awesome TV moment, and I have got it: I have hit the freaking jackpot." THAT was Chris Wallace's reaction; we all know, as journalists should, that he KNEW he had landed on a huge story. He did not look weak; he looked almost gleeful, ebullient. He seemed actually honored that the president was HANDING him such a clearly wonderful moment in TV history: his permitting the president to continue was just fine with Mr. Wallace, for he knew what he had: he had the most important moment in all of the weekend's political news. And he had perhaps the single most vulnerable moment of all of Bill Clinton's public performances.

Let us look at one very evident fact. Not that we have not looked at the facts already (here and here); we at least need to look at just one more. We need to look at the fact that when Bill Clinton said to Mr. Wallace,

And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever...

the only person smirking was Mr. Clinton. If Mr. Wallace's typical impish face -- can he help how he looks? -- offends Mr. Clinton, one can understand that; but one cannot understand making the offense known with such indiscretion. The smirker was not Mr. Wallace at all; if anything, he looked simultaneously embarrassed for the president, glad for the honor of being involved in a journalistic coup offered on a plate by the president, and eager to convey that he has given the president ample room to move to the next topic.

IMPRESSIONS

What is the overall impression viewers should take from this interview? I think there are several things. First, viewers should understand that Mr. Clinton argued against a stereotype; he did not battle criticism. What he fought was a fabrication brought to the interview by him; that fabrication is that Fox News is a right-wing bastion. That stereotype is pervasive in the left-wing faction in North America; Mr. Clinton attempted to score points on it, exploiting it to his advantage.

Second, I think viewers should be wary, full of doubt. I don't buy for one second that Mr. Clinton was "blind-sided" by his first ever interview on Fox's Sunday program. I believe he was looking for this sort of questioning; I suspect he went on the program to show his base how to handle the Fox News program: you bully it. What Bill Clinton did is something utterly stereotypical, and derivative: he played Bill O'Reilly to Chris Wallace. He did the No Spin Zone to Fox News, he out-Factored the Factor and out-Foxed Fox. His was a show to enliven Democrats; he demonstrated to his camp that THIS is how you handle your opponents. He was sending signals.

But it is clear to me that Mr. Clinton's signals are so much Hollywood: it is all about appearances. I have already shown you that on the facts, the pith and substance, of what Mr. Clinton said, he has proven himself confused and misleading. For that he loses the debate, if one deems this interview a debate. But if one wants to look at sheer production value; if stage props and backdrops and lighting and razzle-dazzle impress any person, then such a person will be wowed by Mr. Clinton's performance. I look at what Mr. Clinton actually said and I am unimpressed, while others look at how he looked and sounded and are awed. Not that I have not suggested that one mustn't watch this interview; you must! But what I am saying is that, like Hollywood, this is all about perception and image, about surfaces and fashion and veneered teeth. It is not about substance at all.

Of course, this is utterly consistent with the whole Clinton mystique perpetuated and protected by his many supporters: what he is like in private is of no relation to his public life. Persona is everything, not character. It is as old as 1992, and it is the saddest fact of all, namely, that had Mr. Clinton NOT been a womanizer, had he not been an adulterer, he could have more fully and freely and confidently pursued Osama bin Laden without being hounded by "Wag the Dog" critics. His private peccadilloes DID INDEED adversely affect his foreign policy: too few trusted his actions abroad because of his actions with a woman (obvious pun ignored). He gave his critics fodder to suggest his policies were all farce; they did not generate the fodder out of nothing.

This is what this all boils down to: guilt management. It is the very heart of politics, especially Bill Clinton's politics.

ONE MORE THING

Please note how Chris Wallace first introduced his interview with Mr. Clinton. He first mentions that Mr. Clinton has just completed a successful event, his Clinton Global Initiatives conference. He then says,

As part of the conference, Mr. Clinton agreed to his first one-on-one interview ever on "FOX News Sunday." The ground rules were simple: 15 minutes for our sit-down, split evenly between the Global Initiative and anything else we wanted to ask. But as you'll see now in the full, unedited interview, that's not how it turned out.

The significance of this is clear. What Mr. Wallace shows is that the interview's extra length was really Mr. Clinton's doing. It was not Mr. Wallace's. The criteria do not say that the actual interview must be split literally in half; it simply meant that questions about the initiative and other things needed equal time, in this case, 7 1/2 minutes each. That Mr. Wallace says "unedited" also implies something, namely that the president and viewers understand TV interviews, that interviews are often edited. All this to prove that had Fox really set out to blindside the president, Mr. Wallace would not have let the public know the ground rules. For then it would be too easy for critics to launch an attack against Fox's putative "fair and balanced" motto. But it was Mr. Clinton who gave Chris Wallace far more than he asked for. I am certain Mr. Wallace will be grateful to Mr. Clinton when it comes time for Fox News to renew Mr. Wallace's contract.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Chris Wallace, Fox News, 9/11 Commission, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, The Path To 9/11, Richard Clarke, smirk, wag the dog

Now That's An Interview: Bill Clinton And Chris Wallace -- Part II

This is an update to my earlier post re: President Bill Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace.

In case you are reading this before 10:00 pm EST, you have another chance to watch this enlightening interview at 10:00 on Fox News (Channel 360 on DirecTV). As I said earlier, this is not the sort of interview you can merely read about. It is something very much worth seeing, NO MATTER WHERE on the political spectrum you might find yourself standing, or falling down.

In what follows, I must add to something I said earlier. To those of you who have not read Part I of this series, you will not quite understand my observations here.

CONTINUING WITH THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT

Remember with me the rather confusing things Mr. Clinton said of the 9/11 Commission report: he defended it (seemingly) and then he definitely repudiated it. It was right and yet it was wrong. It was worth following if one wanted to accurately portray the Clinton Administration's fight against terrorism in a particular TV docu-drama; but it was not worth following if one wanted to accurately understand the Clinton Administration's fight against terrorism in general. Really, Mr. Clinton seemed remarkably double-minded about all this. What does the Bible say somewhere about the double-minded man? That he is unstable in all his ways.

Please note this incredible final statement on the 9/11 Commission by Mr. Clinton where he is describing what Democrats must do to win not only the upcoming elections but the upper-hand on defense policy:

But we want to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, which they haven't for four years.

Now the "they" is the Republicans; apparently they have not implemented the 9/11 Commission recommendations for the past 4 years. Of course, let me note for the record that the report is only two years old: it was released on July 22, 2004. But that is not really what's important. What is important is that Mr. Clinton has already told us that the 9/11 Commission report is a "political" document that is WRONG about HIM. One might ask Mr. Clinton how it is that anyone would want to follow any commission's recommendations if that committee is so unbelievably wrong about the actual facts of human history. Why would the Democrats of all people want to follow such recommendations if the report is so utterly false? Or is it only false in some places? If that is the case, where is the document false? Just the places where the document refers to Democrats? Then why would Democrats follow it -- ever? Or is it just false about Mr. Clinton? But how then can it be that he would thus admire it so?

Mr. Clinton also seems confused, in a 'it-depends-on-the-meaning-of-is-is' sort of way, about the precise difference between an opinion and, well, an opinion. Read what he says about Richard Clarke's apparently flawless book on the Clinton anti-terrorism legacy:

Now, look what he [Clarke] said, read his book and read his factual assertions — not opinions — assertions.

Oiks! Got to love those assertions that differ from opinions. It all boils down to what the "meaning of 'synonym' is", I guess.

And What Is This About?

If there was any moment in which Mr. Clinton seemed to come unglued, it was here, when he accused Mr. Wallace of being dishonest:

CLINTON: All I'm saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew Al Qaeda existed then. And …

What exactly did Mr. Wallace ask that Mr. Clinton interpreted as an accusation of providing aid and comfort? Let's see:

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I've got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?

There's a new book out, I suspect you've already read, called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, "I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops." Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole.

CLINTON: OK, let's just go through that.

WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir?

And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response.

I understand that hindsight is always 20/20. ...

CLINTON: No, let's talk about it.

WALLACE: ... but the question is, why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

Do any of you see a "false" accusation here, or even a true one, that the president was giving "aid and comfort to bin Laden"? Does anyone even smell such a thing between the lines?

Fascinating.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Chris Wallace, Fox News, 9/11 Commission, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, The Path To 9/11, Richard Clarke

EXTRA!! PARADOX SPOILS CLINTON/WALLACE INTERVIEW; CONTRADICTIONS TO FOLLOW!

EXTRA!! CLINTON DOES NOT BELIEVE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT IS "TRUE"! READ ALL ABOUT IT

Now That's An Interview: Bill Clinton And Chris Wallace

If you have not seen it, then consider yourself out of touch. Perhaps that is a bit too strong; perhaps you should just consider yourself unlucky.

This morning, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, the former United States president, William Jefferson Clinton, not only gave us the most significant look at who he is as a man, he gave us a look at the kind of politician he actually is. This is no hyperbole on my part: this interview is unbelievable. To Mr. Clinton's supporters he shall be defended as "brave", "strong", "courageous"; he will be touted as having "deftly and eloquently spoken truth to power, unmasking Fox News of its pretense of neutrality, revealing its right-wing and malicious soul." To Mr. Clinton's detractors, he shall appear like a menacing bully (just watch his hands as he pokes Mr. Wallace, or at least the papers on Wallace's lap), leaning forward and ominously in his chair, seemingly unhinged from self-control. Again, irrespective of your opinions of Mr. Clinton, the interview is a MUST SEE. The transcript alone will not convey to you all that you need for a proper impression. If you are reading this before 6:00 pm EST on this date, you can see the interview in its unedited entirety on Fox News Channel (Channel 360 on DirecTV), at 6:00 p.m.

THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT

I am going to go out on a limb here: the most important thing by far that Mr. Clinton said is to be found in a brief sentence that one might consider a throw-away line. It is not. It specifically speaks to what we -- as people who are looking for one small tid-bit of truth -- are (desperately) looking for. But first, let me set the context. Wallace asks (as you can see for yourself from the transcript) regarding 9/11 and al Qaida, "... why didn't you do more, connect the dots and put them [terrorists, Usama bin Laden, al Qaida] out of business?"

Here is the president's reply to Wallace's question:

OK, let's talk about it. Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises.

I'm being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right- wing conservative run in their little "Pathway to 9/11," falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.

All thoughtful people, people who can read and listen with discernment (which is a non-partisan quality), can only reach one conclusion here, and it is the same as the one Mr. Clinton wants all thinking people to reach: all thinking people know that the 9/11 Commission report contradicts three things about the "right-wing conservative" ABC docudrama (mistakenly referred to by President Clinton as "Pathway to 9/11"; it was actually "The Path to 9/11"). The point is utterly well-defined: the film was not true to the 9/11 Commission's conclusions. Would it be too much to infer from Mr. Clinton's assertion that he believes the 9/11 Commission report is authoritative? I mean, he believes there is something wrong, namely, that the film "falsely" claimed "it was based on the 9/11 Commission report" when it wasn't (totally). Would Mr. Clinton be happy had the film been based ENTIRELY on the 9/11 Commission report; or is he merely unhappy because it "falsely" promoted itself as "based" on it?

Let's see what Mr. Clinton has to say in response to a question asked a few minutes later:

WALLACE: May I ask a general question and then you can answer?

CLINTON: Yes.

WALLACE: The 9/11 Commission, which you've talk about — and this is what they did say, not what ABC pretended they said ...

CLINTON: Yes, what did they say?

WALLACE: ... they said about you and President Bush, and I quote, "The U.S. government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second or even third rank."

CLINTON: First of all, that's not true with us and bin Laden.

Now, please note what Mr. Clinton has just done. He has now said that the 9/11 Commission document is not true. He has now said that the 9/11 Commission report is not accurate; it is not reliable. Hence, if that is the case, then why would it be wrong for the "right-wing" film, "The Path to 9/11", to make a case that the 9/11 Commission record is inaccurate or incomplete? In fact, this is what Mr. Wallace SHOULD HAVE ASKED:

With all due respect Mr. Clinton, why have you been so up in arms -- and you have been -- about a fictitious TV docu-drama, and not been vociferously critical of the very REAL 9/11 Commission report which you claim is "not true"? How do you reconcile these disparate reactions?

But perhaps Mr. Wallace need not have asked this at all. For Mr. Clinton gives us, in one little line, EXACTLY what he REALLY thinks.

CLINTON: ... Now, the 9/11 Commission was a political document, too. All I'm asking is, anybody who wants to say I didn't do enough, you read Richard Clarke's book. [emphasis added]

"All I'm asking ..." What, pray tell, is Mr. Clinton asking? He is asking that you read ANOTHER document, an unofficial one, one that sheds light upon his life's work more favorably. What he does not ask you to do is read that "political" book, the one rife with political bluster and misinformation, that OFFICIAL document, that document that does not tell the "truth"; he does not want you to read the 9/11 Commission report. And yet! Umbrage! The ABC film was not based on the 9/11 Commission report!! Right-wing freaks!!

Ahh, it's all Fox News' fault!

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Chris Wallace, Fox News, 9/11 Commission, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, The Path To 9/11, Richard Clarke

Taking My Own Temperature

Today is a day of mixed emotions for me. It marks a turning point in my life, that very hump which many of us approach with anxiety, or look back on with wistfulness. Today marks that middle point: I am halfway to 90 years old.

Of course, what this means is that -- in the simplest terms -- I have fewer days ahead of me than I have wasting behind. In earth days, at least, I have used up most of my heartbeats. It is all rather disconcerting, if I just look at things in a particular way, a particular jaundiced way.

Today's topic is not going to be about my mid-life crisis (which began when I was 21). But it is about death and dying. I do not see how this essay can avoid being personal. For what follows is intensely personal. Those of you who are faint-hearted may want to go elsewhere. This is about guilt, death, anger, loss, and judgment. It is not about luck or hot girls or big money (or wild success in all three). It is about everything we wish we never had to know.

Never Forget A Birthday

On September 17, 1997, my 68-year-old father suddenly died next to his bed. He was found kneeling, his arms crossed, his head down on the coverlet. He looked exactly like a sweet old man in prayer. It's just that he was cold, the temperature of things.

I would speak at his funeral, and pray at his interment, on my 36th birthday, September 21, 1997.

On October 4, 2000, my only sibling, Patti Ann, five years my senior, was suddenly struck with a massive heart attack 2 months after her 44th birthday. She would lie in a comatose state for several difficult days. I would speak at her funeral, and place her body in its grave next to my dad, on October 10 -- my father's birthday.

It is easy to remember these dates.

A Vegetative State

My sister's cardiologist (who is now my cardiologist) tells me that he still shows slides of my sister's heart tissue at medical conferences as examples of a heart that failed and no one knows why. It was perfectly healthy, he tells me. It just stopped.

When Patti Ann's heart stopped she was being driven by her son to a doctor's appointment for discomfort in her chest. Things went dark for her at the most remote spot between her home and the hospital. It took too long to get help; motorists stopped and worked in vain; she was defibrillated four times in the ambulance.

My arrival at the hospital was as quick as quick could be. First I had to pick up my mother -- wheelchair-bound, suffering from "Parkinsonism" and bi-polar disorder -- at her home. We then sped 17 miles to the medical center and rushed (as fast as one can pushing a wheelchair) into the emergency room. But my sister was already in Intensive Care. Doctors talked softly to us; the neurology tests showed massive brain damage; there was no sign of neural activity.

As I entered my sister's room, I noticed her best friend, Dee, holding vigil. With arms scarred from slashing herself, Dee was a bona-fide schizophrenic who was intensely loyal to my sister. Dee was talking to Patti Ann, her voice raised against the din of machines breathing for her friend, machines moving even the mattress to prevent bed sores and atrophy; to keep fluids moving. My first impulse was to run, to flee the scene as quickly as possible. But I had to remain.

And remain I did, though I would go home to sleep when Dee would watch my sister some evenings. But I cannot tell you the torment that I was under; the stress was unbearable. For I kept hearing that my sister would not want to "live like this;" she would not want to linger in a vegetative state. Doctors told me there was nothing of value coursing through her brain; there was no electricity in her circuits. Dee and my mother would say the same sorts of things, things I was not sure of myself. O, the tears, the wailing, the doubts that assailed me. I had no bearings, no sense of direction. This was all uncharted terrain for me. How I wanted a map!

Finally, after several days of abject torture; after calling my dear college friend, Mike, a neurologist at a Maine hospital, I gave the order, the hardest orders of my life. Disconnect, I said, and do not revive. I signed the papers; a nurse put a tag on my sister's chart: DNR is all it said.

And then, pure hell. You see, removing life-support systems (I did not remove the feeding tubes) initially brings improvement to a patient's status. Fluids start to flow, blood pressure improves. There is suddenly a sign of life. In the face of all this, my heart was wrecked. I was confused, even at times delirious. But I would pull myself together; I would be strong. I would pray for my sister, I would confess my sins to her; I would absolve her of her own. I would sing in the dark. And I would fend off demons.

And that is what I did.

Two Last Nights

Two nights before my sister died, I sat next to her in the silent hours and watched as a male nurse gave her a quick sponge bath. Even in the eyes of a sadist the man was clearly too rough; I stopped him gently, saying, "Sir. I would appreciate it if you would be more gentle with my sister. She has had something of a hard life." The nurse then stopped and -- I am not making this up -- said to me, "We've all had hard lives." He then proceeded to tell me his conflict with his father, how his dad did not accept his "alternative" life-style; how he had been misunderstood all his life. I was hurt, dumbfounded. But I was not so hurt or dumbfounded that I could not speak to the cardiologist and the director of human resources at the hospital about such horrific and self-centered care. I never saw the nurse again.

The next day I gathered around my sister with my mother, my wife, several friends of the family, and Dee. There I would wait for the inevitable, but it did not come. What did come was something altogether unexpected. For while sitting near Dee, I could see a strange transformation occurring, but not in my sister. Dee was suddenly getting bigger, broader, her shoulders were expanding outwards. She was tense, her breathing was awkward and irregular. And then she spoke.

Dee had left the room. In her place, George, some sort of male persona emerging from the depths of Dee's schizophrenic soul, suddenly filled the room. "He" began to speak and squirm; there was a hint of belligerence in his tone. To my right I had a dying sister; to my left I had a full-blown schizophrenic episode. Some remote part of me was tempted to laugh, but I could not. Instead, I battled against the demon swelling in my own breast, a demon of rage and incredulity. This assault from dark psychological forces outside of Dee's control was nearly too much for me as I strained to protect the sanctity of my sister's last minutes of life and this hallowed time for my family. I wanted to shriek; I wanted to pull hair. But I did neither. Instead, I asked Christ for wisdom, for guidance. Meanwhile, Dee/George left the room with someone; a scene was brewing outside. In a minute, George/Dee would return, taking up too much space; too much energy. Finally, at the moment when I sensed a lull in infernal forces, I gently placed my hands on Dee's tense shoulders, saying, "George? You are not needed right now. Who I really need right now is Dee. Could you please leave and get her for me? We all really need her right now." At that, George left the room. 30 minutes later, Dee walked in, having subdued George in some very remote place.

The next morning my sister would not be revived.

Why Tell You Today?

The point of this story is not so I can let you too far inside my heart. Nor is it to assault you with the complexities of my family. Had my dad been alive and strong at the time my sister had her heart attack, no doubt things would have been easier for me. But he wasn't, and there I was, left to fend off my own demons and bushwhack my way through unmapped lands.

My real purpose is to discuss the state of my sister's brain. You see, new reports are showing something that I've long feared: people in a vegetative state may still be fully conscious. A recent Wall Street Journal science column discusses a case reported earlier by Science magazine, about a woman who was fully vegetative but was undeniably using her brain WILLFULLY as she responded to mental exercises she was told to try by doctors. "Imagine yourself playing tennis," they said, and she would use that part of her brain associated with such activity. Following other prompts, she would switch to a different part of her brain. And in all instances these were not mere autonomic functions; these parts of the brain were used by an act of volition: she was trying and choosing!

Add to this the results found when giving Ambien -- a sleep inducing drug -- to comatose patients. When this has been tried, some patients who have been comatose for YEARS suddenly wake up and begin talking, only to fall back into a coma. What, pray tell, is the sum when all this is added together? You got it. My own sense of guilt.

You see, I am harrowed by thoughts that my sister was not really gone. I am harrowed by thoughts that I was not at my attentive best: schizophrenia, parkinson's, bi-polar disorder, a wheelchair, a crazy nurse. All these dulled me. And while I pleaded with the doctors to tell me the truth; when I asked them whether they were reluctant to revive my sister because she was without health insurance (they assured me, and I believed them, that they would and could not morally or legally do such a thing); when I searched the cosmos for guidance and found none that was clear and self-evident, I may have made a decision that was not one bit clear or even right.

My larger point is this: the battle happening all over the world in the hearts of many men and women faced with similar decisions must never be inflamed by outside stresses. These decisions must be made in sanctity and security. They must be framed in trust, they must be made with all available information. I never once saw my sister's EEG; I never demanded to know whether what I was being told was the final word. Why? Because grief and anger and confusion clouded my very soul.

And for me, a man who is pro-life to the very pith and marrow of his being, I cannot tell you how unsettled these days, these days of birth and death, make me feel.

Peace to you all, this glorious day.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The two poems, linked to above (this one, and this), have not been published before, though they have been read at public readings. ICU was also read before an audience of poets and novelists at Colgate University in 2002.

The Existence Of God: A Letter To Christopher Hitchens

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

You are a man of tremendous talent. I am always amazed not only by your erudite prose (so precise and elegant), but also your wits. You remind me a bit of William F. Buckley Jr.; though he is loathed by many, he is surely not loathed for being dull-witted. You may not like the comparison with a man so thoroughly conservative. But surely you must agree that both of you possess mastery over language; surely you agree that such mastery is desirable in all thinking men and women and secretly envied by most. My envy is not one whit secret: your offhand comments are more substantive than my highest order cogitations. Most men struggle to express what you simply toss off parenthetically. Minds like yours assemble in one sentence what others destroy in whole paragraphs. I thank you for the inspiration.

But I am not always convinced you are as critical as you should be. While I respect that you might describe yourself as a self-interested libertine in a fight against Islamofascists intent on, at best, revoking your license; while I agree with the thrust of this fight and that much of Islam threatens our freedoms; I am not sure I agree with your suggestion that religion in general is a threat to human life and dignity. Your recent comments on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" -- indicative of your thoughts on religion in general -- strike me as passionately spoken and yet intellectually stunted. Permit me to refresh your memory. The reason (partly) for Mr. Matthews' interview with you and Jerry Brown, as you might recall, was the recent lecture given by Pope Benedict XVI in which the Holy Father made the unfortunate decision -- or so you averred -- to quote a crusading emperor's feelings regarding Islam's contributions to the world. You said:

"The fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor Manuel, who had said the Koran was wicked because it preached spreading faith by the sword. And I can‘t imagine who advised the pope to do this. The Muslim world is always saying, falsely, that it‘s being attacked by a Crusade, a Zionist conspiracy and all this nonsense. And now you have somebody invoking and reviving the idea of the Crusader period and talking as if only Islam has ever spread its faith by violence.…

"It shows secularism is our only friend. And what we‘re fighting for is the secular enlightenment against all forms of unreason and theocracy…"

What's quite clear in (all) your comments is that you admit Islam and Roman Catholicism are both claiming revelation; such revelations have led to bloodshed and tyrannous coercion: both faiths wield a weapon -- one a sword, another a scimitar. This, I would gather, simply expresses your belief. Am I wrong?

Even if I am fallible here, I am not fallible in describing your belief that secularism is the friend of all thinking humans. Of course, by secularism you must mean those systems of thought and order which are solely derived from unencumbered reason: you await a complete "enlightenment against all forms of unreason." If you're are at all credal, this, I bet, would be your creed.

Now it would not necessarily win me a single polemical point if I mentioned that the secular state of the Soviet Union, a state committed solely to reason and the mechanization of society according to reason's laws, was itself prone to wielding something like a sword. The Soviet sword, however, was a bit more like a hammer and a sickle, where thinking humans were either pounded into submission or sickled down like so many weeds. Furthermore, this reasonable state was heaped in philosophical idealism, in a religious historical determinism which believed such enlightenment was an inevitable fact of temporal forces: the proletariat would and must seize control of their fate. In short, even Soviet reasonableness was clouded by unreason. For it might be the case that to believe solely in the inevitable force of reason is to be as unreasonable as any religious clod in the street. And it might be the case that those, like you, who hold reason rather high, might be forgetting something.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO

I hope, Mr. Hitchens, that you will not mind if I share with you an argument that came together in my mind during my sophomore year in college. You see, while I was studying The History of Philosophy, Part II, under the tutelage of my professor, Malcolm Reid, something Dr. Reid said about Immanuel Kant transformed my very soul. It was really a remark made in passing that was then shaped into a question by a classmate, Nathan Stoltzfus. The remark was about Kant's idea of a transcendental ego; the question was whether Kant had unwittingly proven God's existence. I will skip the part about the proof. But I can't skip what fascinated me to no end: the part about the very nature of knowing oneself.

I wonder if you will permit me the following. I wonder if you will accept these simple subject/object propositions: I see a tree; I observe a lemon; I touch this keyboard. For surely these simple propositions are as basic to empiricism and reason as one can find. You and I can even agree to criteria that will give us some reasonable certainty that I am in fact seeing, observing and touching these very things; that such things are indeed there to be seen and touched. But I wonder if you will permit me this proposition: I see I. Or, perhaps I can state it this way: I observe myself. What do you think? Is there a problem with this?

Forgive the didactic nature of my comments here; forgive that I should presume to teach you a thing about basic philosophy, about simple epistemology. But there is a gnawing problem here, one that gnaws at one's guts. And since you believe that religious faith is unreasonable in contrast to secularism, I am left believing that you cannot have possibly chewed on this problem long enough.

Let me pose the problem this way. Can you observe yourself? Of course, we hear people all the time say that they can and do observe themselves. They do not mean they observe themselves in a mirror or portrait; they mean that they observe their own minds with their own minds. They mean a type of mental mirror, a sort of self-reflection. But I ask you, if you can observe yourself, who is doing the observing? If you can examine yourself, who, or what, is doing the examining? Or are you a self observing yourself observing yourself? Can you even do that without reflecting, like so many parallel facing mirrors, ad infinitum?

Surely you see the conundrum. Though we can have things outside of ourselves be objects of our own consciousness, we are not able to make our own consciousness an object of itself. It is not possible for the subject to be its own object; it's not possible for the knower to simultaneously know himself. It is a bit like Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty: one can't measure the position or velocity of a particle without affecting either (and hence one can't be certain of either). Thus, we cannot prove to ourselves that we even have selves: it is not possible to make one's mind an object of scrutiny. How then does each of us even know we have a self?

We know this by extrapolation made in faith. It is faith, not certainty, that is at the bottom of our 'certainty.' I cannot prove to you I exist, because I cannot prove my own existence even to myself. I have to make a leap of faith that I exist, or that my existence and mind and thoughts correspond at all to the reality outside my very being. There is no one who is not faith-full. Faith is the very basis of human epistemology. You can be certain of it.

This, at least to me, is what I got out of Dr. Reid's simple remark about Kant's transcendental ego. And I believe this all proves that no one is free of being religious, or, in your words, unreasoned.

IS THIS FAIR?

I do not know if you really ever forgot, as I implied above, this fact of human consciousness forced on us by reality. I do not know if you have not thought all this through before and have some proper and compelling answer. But I will state that I cannot imagine anyone would not agree that faith inheres in all people; that even the possibility of having souls that can believe or doubt is akin to revelation. I recognize the concomitant anxiety this all portends, for if we all share this fact of faith, we are left a bit at sea: what revelation, if any, is the most truthful? After all, if we cannot prove our own selves to our selves, how can we prove -- or, more interestingly -- disprove, the existence of God?

The battle afoot, Mr. Hitchens, is not really a battle between civilizations or for civilization. Such a battle is superficial and a true distraction. To limit this battle to mere clashes of peoples is to descend into quagmire. What this battle is, is nothing more than the very battle of wisdom, of what is real, true, and actual; about the nature of knowledge and the very cosmos; about the essence of humanity and the nature of God. This is a battle between lies and truth, between heresy and orthodoxy, between Satan and God. It is a battle that has been raging since Eden. And it is all contained in God's first question to Adam and Eve after they fled that lost paradise: Where are you?

Where, oh, where are we indeed. The answer, obviously, cannot come from ourselves.

Peace to you, dear sir.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Christopher Hitchens, Clash of civilizations, God, Faith, Philosophy, Epistemology, Chris Matthews, Hardball, William F. Buckley

Lowliness of Heart

My wife called minutes ago. It seems that sad news has struck one of my former high school teachers and his family. A few months ago, Greg, who teaches economics and government, and his wife, lost their beautiful home to fire. Now, it seems, they have learned that their 25-year-old son, so full of promise, has been killed in a car crash. Take a moment to pray for Greg and Linda. They are good folk.

It all breaks the heart.

LIVING A WHOLE LIFE NONETHELESS

Last night, my son and I watched (on TLC) the utterly shocking yet amazingly inspiring story of Rosemarie Siggins, a wife and mother, who has lived her entire life with only half a body. There is no end of heroism in this tale. Her husband is something of a walking marvel; she, quite literally, is a saint on a skateboard. Tragedy may abound, but so does the miraculous. Her affirmation of life under the most arduous of circumstances is gently persuasive. I pray for a heart like hers.

CONFESSIONS OF A MAD MAN

On Saturday night, my wife and I enjoyed a capital meal at one of the area's finest restaurants. During dinner I revealed a rather ugly side to my soul, for I admitted that I had hatred in my heart for a particular set of people. And when I say hatred, I mean a visceral, hand-trembling, foaming-at-the-mouth sort of loathing; a hatred that seethes. I cannot explain how this hatred came about; I confess that my own heart has blindsided me.

What set of people is it that I hate? It is that set of people who believe that the grotesque attacks of 9/11 were not perpetrated against the western world by radical Muslims. Rather, the 9/11 attacks were conducted by the Bush administration in concert with Jewish agents; or any similar agents other than the Muslim radicals who seek to destroy America. During dinner I said that I do not deny these conspiracy-theorists their patriotism. I deny their humanity. And I know that I should not think this way; I admit my feelings are all screwed up. But I cannot for the life of me find anything more vile than this sort of willful blindness; to think there are people who believe that what thousands witnessed, namely planes flying into buildings, was naught but an incredibly orchestrated illusion (perhaps illusionist David Blaine is Osama bin Laden), is too much for my small brain to entertain. I am doomed.

ON A RELATED NOTE

Forgive me, please, for my acid tongue of late. I feel on the very fringes of control. Anger, indeed, is getting the best of me. I know that I used some profanity here a couple of weeks ago; I know I tried to justify it by arguing that even God must expect us to damn damnable things. But there seems to be an underlying anxiety, even dread, that has me so thin-skinned. Perhaps it is because I feel I have lost my Christian faith: I am a practicing agnostic who holds tenuously to a theoretical orthodoxy. I no longer attend any church. I no longer pray with earnest discipline. I can't find my way toward what once came more easily than fresh air. I walk through this strange valley and wonder not only from whence comes my help, but when. I stare in the mirror without any sense of recognition. I have grown into that man I never wanted to become.

Please, forgive me for my doubts.

WHISPERING

I don't know if you've seen this TV program or not, but it might be the greatest TV show of all time. Of course, I am talking of "Dog Whisperer." Nothing comes more wonderfully close to a perfect self-help show than this. For here is a man, brilliantly simple and simply brilliant in so many ways, who proclaims some of the most direct and bold psychological statements imaginable, and yet is thoroughly innocuous due to his topic: he is talking about dogs. But he is really talking about people; and what he shows me about myself everytime I watch is amazing. For the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, often has me shaking my head and muttering, "Dear Lord, my wife is right!" Right indeed.

Peace to you all.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Hurting My Back, Uplifting Rosie O'Donnell, Without Question

[Today's topics: Rosie O' Donnell, Republicans' inability to "Question Authority", and back pain.]

For the past few days I've been standing while writing. You see, I injured my back the other day while doing the Herculean task of lifting a small stone from my yard. So now I stand typing at the keypad of my Mac, letting my back settle into place.

For those of you with back problems, the nagging kind that do not include blown or ruptured disks, I encourage you to do what your body was really made to do: I encourage you to stand. I have found that, even if I am in full blown spasm, if I force myself to walk, I will eventually cease being in spasm. Relief may come at the two mile mark; it might come at the six mile mark, but it always comes. Seriously. The second you know you've hurt your back (assuming you have decent clothes and shoes on), get walking. My experience is the worst thing you can do is sit or lie down, both of which are very tempting. Humans were made to be erect; it is a good position. One walk, of course, will not do the trick; and you just can't keep walking forever. You will need to start a walking regimen if you want to keep things in good shape. When I start cutting my walking or increasing my sitting time, I am destined for trouble.

But I know nothing about any of this. I only know what works for me.

THE END OF THE WORD

Yesterday on "The View", Rosie O'Donnell, that profound professor we all have come to respect for her trenchant insights into, and incisive analysis of all things geo-political, offered us her astute view that "[r]adical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state." And, of course, she is thoroughly right. Radical Christianity is as much a threat as radical Islam. But we are left, not so much with Rosie's View, but our own. Since Rosie does not define for us what radical Christianity is, we can only guess that she means things tautologically, you know, in an "all bachelors are unmarried males" sort of way. Rosie must mean that radical Christianity IS radical Islam; for if, as she says, radical Islam -- which we know -- is as threatening as radical Christianity -- which none of us knows -- then they must be the same thing.

And, indeed, they are. Tour any Catholic church during a high holy feast and you will hear Catholic priests call for jihad against all those outside its folds. Go to any evangelical college and hear professors call for a holy war against all things non-Christian, inciting students to take up arms so as to lop off arms, and heads. Go to any Protestant church and watch Christians huddle together in back rooms, soldering switches to bombs as they strap C-4 to their chests. Watch tonight on "The 700 Club" as Pat Robertson shoots an AK-47 or an AR-14 at a cutout of some unfortunate infidel abortion doctor; watch Billy Graham urge the masses to convert from lives of sin, calling them to work as covert operatives for their personal warrior, Jesus the Christ.

Of course, no one dare point out that Christianity's Christ is a known pacifist; nor should anyone be allowed to remember that God's "final prophet" Muhammad was an absolute warrior with blood on his hands. Not one single Christian disciple (of The Twelve) is known to have once led an attack on a desert city; Muhammad is not known for once raising someone from the grave. He is only known as someone who put people there and then gave the living loads of stern advice on how to avoid the same fate.

One can only imagine that Ms. O'Donnell is convinced that George W. Bush is a radical Christian. Indeed, indeed, Ms. O'Donnell, those nasty Methodists are known for their bellicosity and insatiable lust for blood. Even Bob Jones University, that bastion of pugilistic fundamentalism, is merely renowned for its misguided stand against miscegenation. Odd, though, that it has no reputation for decapitation. But it is, in Rosie's View, as much of a threat as those who cut off human heads on videotape. "Praise be to Thee, Lord Christ" may not be the same as "Allah Akhbar," but it is somehow, in Rosie O'Donnell-fiction-land, "just as" threatening.

What this all means for us here is that the words "threatening", "radical", and "Christian" have finally lost their meaning.

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL FACT

Yesterday, during a weak moment, I listened for a short while to the ever anemic Mike Barnicle show, a radio talkshow on 96.9 FM in Boston. Barnicle, as some of you know, is that master of sarcasm who lost his Metro section feature column at The Boston Globe because he was accused of reckless misuse of copyright when he failed to give credit to comedian George Carlin after publishing some of his jokes. His talkshow, curiously, strikes me as a cheap derivative of the "Imus in the Morning" show, which immediately precedes Barnicles' own two hours. In fact, Barnicle imitates Imus so often (in my opinion) one is tempted to think his diluted show would be better named "Imus with Water."

Barnicle's guest yesterday was journalist and pundit Martin (Marty) F. Nolan (I think I have this right).

Well, Mr. Nolan pontificated rather broadly, so to speak, even to the point of suggesting that Republicans, by nature, "do not question authority." I presume Mr. Nolan reached this conclusion on the secure fact that Republicans -- in Nolan's world, at least -- generally do not have glued to their cars that notoriously daring bumper sticker, "Question Authority." He averred that Republicans generally do not think for themselves; it is something of an "anthropological fact", something in their wiring, that prevents them from doing anything but conceding to overlords.

Despite the absurdly self-promoting posture of Mr. Nolan; and despite the ludicrous attempt at being scientific, Mr. Nolan's opinion -- as ugly as racism as it is -- is simply not supported by the facts. And the facts are that Republicans despise authority. But it is not that they hate the authority of experts; they accept expertise with a properly sceptical humility. Republicans know enough about certain things to know that they don't know enough about those things; if the President is in the Oval Office with the head of the CIA, Republicans know enough to be convinced that -- if they themselves are absent -- they do not know what was shared, said, or accomplished. And if it is true, as Democrats CONSTANTLY proclaim -- that this is the most secretive administration in the history of the very universe -- then Republicans are even quicker to accept that they are not authorities of all things Bush. But the sort of authority that Republicans do despise is the authority of the mere common man. Republicans know that if you walk up to any war protester holding a sign on any town square, you will be assaulted by an authority unlike any of us has ever seen in the White House. Stop any anti-Bush Democrat in a local pub; read any Democrat's op-ed in the Letters to the Editor pages of your local paper, and you'll see authority dripping from tongue and pen. Nay, you'll see infallibility in every phrase; you'll hear total inerrancy in every word. Democrats are rife with certainty, with authority. Just listen to Howard Dean. The man is certain about everything.

Moreover, the facts are also in the favor of Republicans when it comes to thinking for oneself. Michael Moore, we'll recall, rose up as an authority on the REAL causes of 9/11; he pushed the "chicken hawk" term to the forefront of anti-Bush railings. Democrats followed Mr. Moore en masse, never once questioning the authority of his sources. Paul Begala, the whiny, petulant little fuss-pot who is James Carville's political siamese twin, published a silly little book called, It's STILL The Economy, Stupid! One Democrat I know liked it for its massive citations found at the back of the book. I, of course, had already read the book; would it matter if I pointed out that the citations were nothing more than quotes from newspapers? No, it would not.

Al Gore, who is neither a scientist nor an expert, is jet-setting around the globe to tell us that jet-setting is bad for the atmosphere. However, the entire DNC has hooked its wagon to this rising cloud, and nary a Democrat has risen to challenge Gore's authority on all things climatological. My best friend, a meteorologist whose grad school professors are those guys at the National Hurricane Center, told me recently of a conversation he had with someone touting Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", Gore's lecture film on global warming. My friend reports that his interlocutor said that he should see the film, especially "since it was not at all political." Of course, if there is a proven anthropogenic source of global warming, it is the loud guffaw such a remark elicited. Not political? Is not Al Gore a politician? Is he NOT trying to influence policy?

Democrats accept as authoritative that the Vietnam War was not a Democratic failure, even though it was the Democrats who escalated that failed conflict. Democrats accept as authoritative that it was their party that freed the country of racism in the 1960s, when in fact it was the Democrats who stood on the floors of Congress and sought to bring down equal rights legislation. Democrats accepted as authoritative that Bill Clinton's sin was merely about sex; they accepted that he was not bombing the HELL out of Iraq or the Balkans as a wag-the-dog distraction. Democrats hear one or two (out of hundreds) of U.S. generals speak against the Bush Plan in Iraq, and they accept those generals' authority as absolute. Democrats hear John Kerry denounce tax cuts for the rich, and they accept his authority without once noting that Kerry and his beloved wife did not -- as Massachusetts law permits -- voluntarily pay their taxes at a higher rate. Democrats accept as authoritative the news that hybrid cars are "better", and they rush out to acquire them without once asking whether Toyota and Honda are using MORE ENERGY to produce those cars and get them to market (neither company is hauling their many orders to market in anything but diesel-powered trucks). Democrats defer to an authority -- like Rosie O' Donnell, Sean Penn, or Tereza Heinz-Kerry -- merely because they are rich (which is the only reason any of us listen to such folks).

But Republicans listen to Al Gore with loads of doubt. Republicans are even sceptical of their leaders; one can see that in countless polls, Republicans are in fact less happy with President Bush than they once were. Apparently, Republicans DO think for themselves. But the one group I bet has not shifted much in the Bush Sucks category is the all-knowing, never questioning Democrats. It's a biological thing, I guess.

Really, let's be plain about this. Democrats knock on your door and tell you with all authority that gun control is a must; you are called a yahoo if you doubt them. Democrats knock on your door and tell you with certainty that oil is bad to burn; they call you a fool if you think it's at present the best choice for fuel (and if you point out that they drove to your house to tell you this). Democrats knock on your door to tell you with all authority that Republican leaders are fascistic fundamentalists trying to scare you to vote for them; and yet they call you a blind follower when you point out that Democrats themselves are trying to scare you into voting against scaremongers. Democrats knock on your door with much conviction about there being no connection between Iraq and terrorism, and you chuckle when you watch them denounce you as a lunatic for pointing out that Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa listed America's relations to Iraq as the "best proof" why Americans should be killed and their money stolen. The boys driving big trucks in hillbilly-land are "rednecks" because they reject the authority of The Boston Globe; congressional Republicans are denounced as ingrates for thinking for themselves that a brain injured woman might still have the right to life. You get the picture, and it is a sad one.

Seriously, you are all invited by Democrats to think for yourselves on the one thoughtful condition that your thoughts conform to the thoughts of Democrats. This, I bet, is one anthropological fact Democrats will not question.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Democrats, Bush, Republicans, Authority, Question Authority, Rosie O' Donnell, The View, Radical Islam, Radical Christianity, Mike Barnicle, Marty Nolan, Al Gore, Global Warming, Bill Clinton

The Sounds Of Silence

Yesterday was a beautiful September day in New England. The sky was crystal clear (though there were a few puffy clouds); the air was dry and just cool enough in the morning for sweaters, and just warm enough in the afternoon for shorts. It was nearly like that perfect day five years ago, though yesterday had a gentle breeze. The fateful September day in 2001 was truly a beautiful day, utterly still.

And yet there would be an earthquake in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I learned last night that when the South Tower of the World Trade Center fell, it registered on seismographs as far away as Maine. When I was standing five years ago in a beautiful meadow in Greenfield, NH photographing men and women working at a community home and farm for the disabled, I was under the mere but nonetheless serious impression that the only news was that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. I did not think to pay heed to the earth trembling under my feet when both buildings collapsed; I had no idea that the Pentagon had been hit or the sylvan land of William Penn had been pierced by a crashed jetliner in Pennsylvania. While working that morning, I had been worried for a few hours. By lunchtime, I would be horrified. (I did not watch the videos of Ground Zero for months afterwards, for I could not allow myself to see those towers topple.)

There was another thing I did not know when I stood in that great pasture on that lovely farm. I did not know that the sky was empty and silent for the very first time in my life.

***

I remember sitting on a ridge on Mount Monadnock probably 22 years ago. I was camping (illegally) on that fine peak with a friend. I was restless in the middle of the night, so I rose and went out of the tent and sat under the stars. The air was utterly still; I heard nothing but my own breathing. Then, suddenly coming from my right, the southeast, I could hear a distant roar, a trembling rush of mechanical power. Though I was 60 miles northwest of Boston, I could hear one lone jet rumble down the runway at Logan Airport. It startled me at how loud it actually was; I marveled at how the brain edits the every day noises that, if I just took a moment to notice, are indeed louder than I would have imagined.

As I sat there listening, I recall getting angry at this nasty intrusion into my silence; well, not my silence, but the very silence of the cosmos. I had first felt in that clear moonless night a tranquility that rose straight up toward the infinite other over my head; now I could feel a tremor in the very rock beneath my hand. The roar of the jet grew more intense, sharper even, as it came close to my spot on the ridge. Though it was perhaps tens of thousands of feet over my head when it passed, I could hear it with a clarity that bordered on pain. And I sat there and listened until it flew over the far western horizon; I could still hear it after its blinking lights had long disappeared, its engines echoing off the very atmosphere around me. Then, just as it slipped to the very edges of audibility, I could hear another jet on the distant runway, and I cursed the engines again and again. I remember wishing I could just once hear a silent sky.

For several days in 2001 my wish was granted, and I could not find the beauty. All air travel was suspended. The weather remained spectacular for days and days after New York was attacked. But for the few days when air travel ceased, I would, at night, go out into our meadow to hear this new silence; and I could not help but feel like I could hear a hum coming from Manhattan 250 miles away. I felt like I could even see Manhattan as I looked, southwest over the shoulders of Mount Monadnock; suddenly the city seemed ever so close, as if I could walk there. It felt like I could hear the whispers of caregivers and rescuers; I felt like I could hear the chatter of radios and the humming of generators; there was something like a gasp trembling the night air.

But the fact is I could hear nothing. The silence was deafening. And I found myself longing for the sounds overhead I had once hated, the roaring sounds that had become the very sounds of peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: 9/11, Silence, Mount Monadnock

"There Are No Words"

Google Goes The Bong Water: Bombs Away, Man!

You have heard the term before, I bet, but it is completely new to me: Google Bomb. It is a fun little term, reminiscent of something a baby might gurgle forth -- from either end -- while nursing or taking a bottle. It sounds harmless. But is it?

If you are paying attention, then you've heard that the ultra-right wing TV network, ABC, is airing a docu-drama called "The Path to 9/11." Democrats instantly cried foul when they discovered the movie would not tout their party's line. Calling the film "A Despicable, Irresponsible Fraud," Democrats are muscling ABC and others not to show the film at all. And Fox News reports that bloggers are planning (I can't confirm this) to Google Bomb the whole thing (for further reading on the fine art of Google Bombing, read this and this.)

All sorts of people have jumped into the fray. Bill Clinton is apparently upset that the film might show that his eight years protecting us from terror (and bombing the hell out of Iraq), had something to do with the lead up to 9/11. Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger (you know, the Clinton Administration member who stole documents from the National Archives on the eve of his testimony before the 9/11 Commission) have even drafted letters to ABC's parent company, the flamingly right-wing Disney Co., rebuking Disney for the film's inaccuracies.

Speaking of Mr. Berger, who was Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, I cannot help but share this drop of LSD from the July 21, 2004 Washington Post:

Berger's attorneys have acknowledged that he removed numerous classified memos, and apparently discarded some, as he reviewed materials on behalf of the Clinton administration for the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They said the removal of documents was inadvertent but that Berger was aware he was violating the law when he removed his handwritten notes without submitting them for review by National Archives staff. [emphasis added for maximum hallucinatory effect]

Is it at all disheartening to remind ourselves that the pothead, LSD generation is now in power in this country? Does the presence of the "one pill makes you small" diplomats in Washington explain how the above quote makes nary a ripple in the "give peace a chance" crowd intent on blaming George Bush for Pompeii and Jimi Hendrix' overdose? It really is a good question these bongers ask: Where is (snort, snort) the outrage?

But I digress; my short term memory is shot from all the second-hand cannibis smoke I am inhaling here at Contratimes (little conservative brother to High Times?).

What I've been discussing is the outrage over a film that threatens to cast a sacred cow into the abyss. That cow is that Democrats are without blame in their dealing with pre-9/11 threats; that all this fear and alarm and terror is due to Republicans and their bravado and bellicosity. Bush is a macho, fart-sniffing bully. Bill Clinton served ably as the world's pastor who never once inhaled even a fart. You get the picture: It's election time. 9/11, Iraq, global warming, election fraud, oil prices: you name it, the Democrats are going to milk it all for a few months merely to get a few votes, a few seats of power. What is sick is that, if we REALLY ARE AT WAR, Democrats have nearly unanimously contradicted not some things, but every thing that comes out of the President's mouth. They MUST contradict; for if they don't, they immediately render themselves superfluous. If there is really only one way to fight X, Democrats will nonetheless propagandize that X is illusory, or that fighting X just one way is foolish, fatal, or "unnuanced." That this happens on both sides of the political aisle is clear, though since I have been an adult this country has not been at war until recently: and war does necessitate some restraint for the sake of unity if a country wants to defend itself. I think that much of the criticism by the left is solely self-serving; they care only about themselves. Bush and Co. are nearly out of office; they have no selfish ambitions really left to serve and yet we are constantly warned that the Bushies are creating a neo-Nazi dynasty, dictatorial, fascistic or both. But it is their detractors who really do have something to gain, and we know what that is.

Perhaps we should create our own Google Bomb here. Perhaps we should storm Disney and ABC urging them not to cave in to censorship. Perhaps we should, like good Republicans, demand that ABC protects the rights of artists who have the right to spin 9/11 any way they deem necessary. After all, Republicans are well aware of the films and essays and books that "prove" that I or you or your crack dealer actually wrapped the World Trade Center in cordite, and yet the RNC itself (unlike its DNC counterpart) does not rush out to ask Google to stop providing access to such material. My recent conversation with a Dutch couple who have American citizenship illustrates a very important point: while both of them are wildly liberal, they find they can have more balanced political conversations with conservatives because (or so they argue) conservatives understand -- fully -- each person's right to free speech. According to my Dutch friends, liberals simply do not get that part of the Constitution.

Are they right? They think so.

Peace.

PS. I think that if we do create a Google Bomb, we should ensure that the search query "Best President in History" lands on Luke Buckham, and the phrase "myopic genius" lands on Mike the Eye Guy." Surely we can at least agree that if we Google "Ladies Man" we end up here; or "Babish Canadian Bloggers" gets us here; or "Springsteen wannabe" gets us to this fine place.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Google Bomb, The Path To 9/11, ABC, DNC, Democrats, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Washington Post, conspiracy theories, high times, pot, bongs, paranoia, free speech, Republican

The Seinfeld Administration

I wonder if readers can guess where I might be going with this essay merely by its title. My guess is that a good number of you can.

The incredible TV show, Seinfeld, was a cornucopia brimming with pop-culture gifts for the tongue: Soup Nazi, shrinkage, regifting, hand, marble rye, Hennigan's, preemptive breakup, low talker, close talker, "quone", the Bro (or manssier), bubble boy, pigman. These delights fall off the tongue, they spill over merry lips; at least they do for those of us who have watched the show (and there are many of us). We get these terms; they make sense of certain things that ordinary words fail to describe. They give us the giggles; they are part of our laughing lexicon. Even the name "Seinfeld" has been incorporated into pop-speech, e.g. "This is a real Seinfeld" (or "Seinfeld moment"). The show shaped pop-culture, and we let it, with delight.

As I've mentioned several times at Contratimes, language is not static; a dictionary is not a law book, it is but a guide. It tells us merely how words are used; it does not insist that words MUST be used certain ways, nor does it prevent new meanings, even new words, from taking form.

How is it then that so many critics of George Bush's language skills don't see their own linguistic foolishness? When Bush "invents" the word "decider"†, how is it that his critics suddenly act as if A) they don't know what he means; B) there is a law that prevents new words from existing in a fluid or dynamic state; C) the new word makes no sense in context; and D) Bush is stupid? When he says that terrorist leaders have sent "suiciders" to terrorize normal folk -- no doubt a word that conflates suicide and bombers into one neat word -- why is that snickered at as dopish? Is it not a perfectly good word even if it is a gaffe? Is it not perfectly descriptive; is it not a good alternate?

Ironically, Bush's gaffes are finding longevity in the marketplace of ideas and the public square because his critics are breathing life into them. Sarcastic commentators use the words every day; bloggers love to describe his penchant for malapropisms, while others have given Bush himself a new name in light of his linguistic liberty ("Bumbleshrub" is one such name given by blogger Just Ain't Right). The irony is simply lost on these critics; and what is also lost on them is that when Bush invents a word (many educators actually encourage children to use inventive spelling when young) his readers and listeners STILL understand what he is saying.

Hey, I am something of a word guy, so surely you would think his tongue-stumbles would bother me. Perhaps they do. But he has coined some very useful words, like "misunderestimated" (which makes perfect sense), "decider" (not really coined, see note below), "suicider" and so on. Why is he not therefore perceived as a creative genius; why is he not seen as the architect of new ideas and concepts? Why is he at least not loved as an entertainer, or as a half-idiot savant seated in high office (like Being There's Chauncy Gardiner)?

You see, this stuff is to political language what Seinfeld was to breakroom badinage: it is the stuff that entertains (and it is stuff that makes us pay attention in a weirdly earnest way). By comparison, the Clinton Administration was a veritable word wasteland, a linguistic Death Valley. What pop phrase pops into your mind from those eight years, those tarpits of tongue? Merely the lone and meager mindbender, the "definition of IS is" foolishness. Bush, on the other hand, will no doubt impact every English dictionary: his malapropisms have life. We all get them.

Speaking of Mr. Clinton, I recall listening to him answer a question posed by NPR's Terry Gross in 2004. His answer was so prolix that even Deep Blue could not have deciphered it. And his reply was without a single mispronounced word. I scratch my head wondering how a man who speaks smoothly yet makes no sense is preferred over a man who brandishes an unruly tongue and yet is understood at every turn. Are Americans really too stupid to get the beauty of "misunderestimated"? Do they have no capacity for the truly incisive "suiciders"?

Only the bushleagured dolts who mock him would tire of his malappropriateness or his diseloquence. Unlike them, I am enlivened knowing that language is not stuck in the leaden lexicons of Bush's critics who abhor linguistic dynamism. They are so many malcontentious verbaphobes. To give them heed would be misattention on our part. But I truly delight in the fact that Bush's critics are the ones who will be responsible for ensuring his blunders last in lexicons in perpetuity.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

†Please note that this word is a legitimate English word, by the way; a fact which should have been mentioned when I first penned this. In haste, I failed to make note that this word appears in literary usage as early as 1593 (according the Oxford English Dictionary). [This addendum added January 12, 2007. See comment at the end of this 2007 post.]

For a related essay, go here.

Technorati tags: Seinfeld, Bush, Language, Malapropisms, Decider, Suiciders