Is Abortion Strictly A Religious Debate?

I’ll dig up the quote later, but I could swear that in one of the Supreme Court decisions there was language that said that part of the question about abortion is religious in nature, which is where life begins.

But it’s not really “life” so much as “where does the soul begin?” I think some pro-choice speakers have backed themselves into a rhetorical corner when they can’t admit that conception or fetuses represent the beginning of life. I’ll agree they do represent some kind of beginning. But its only the beginning step which shouldn't be conflated with all the steps that have to come afterwards to realize its full potential.

I think the pro-choice line is that conception and pregnancy represent potential life, which is close to how I put it. Meaning that the title of life is withheld until the promise has been fulfilled by a live birth. Because when the sperm hits the egg that doesn’t mean it automatically becomes a baby let alone even a fetus (with or without abortion being the intercedent). For many people the egg has to implant in the uterine wall to really even be called conception. It’s almost the difference between having a seed and planting a seed in fertile ground. All the right ingredients have to be in place before a plant will even sprout.

But if conception and pregnancy do represent life, or potential life, what they don’t easily show is where the threshold of soul possession begins. You can substitute the blander term of "personhood" for the loaded term of "soul." But really soul is a much more apt term to describe the difference between an individual and a non-individual. Or the even more poetic term of “spark of life.”

When do you have a soul and when do you not? Do you have a soul when you are still a zygote? Do you have a soul when you are still in utero? We acknowledge that people who are brain-dead can have their life-support machines turned off by family members. What is a person who is brain-dead? Where has their soul gone? Where will their soul go when you turn off the machine?

So how come no one asks where the souls of aborted fetuses go? I’m surprised neither the pro-choice nor the anti-choice side ever even comes close to discussing this. Maybe it’s because it’s like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Everyone’s answer is going to be individual in nature with no one clear cut answer. (Hah! Unlike everything else in the abortion debate…)

But here’s my question. Most anti-abortion activists, those who actually get involved in the issue, tend to be fairly religious. I haven’t yet met or heard of an atheist anti-abortion activist. Most, although clearly not all, religious anti-abortion types think a) there’s a heaven and b) children and babies go to heaven. Yes I know, there’s a whole big debate in Catholicism about baptism and babies…but since I’m not an expert in that I’ll refrain from mucking around in that area, but suffice to say it’s not uncommon to hear amongst Protestants that babies go to heaven.

So if the aborted babies’ souls go directly to heaven and do not pass Go (ie live life) is that any different than not being born at all? What’s the difference between the unborn and the pre-born aborted? Do the pre-born aborted get another shot at life? If they do, then what is the problem with abortion in terms of unrealized life? Wouldn’t they just get another go around later? I’m a Buddhist and that’s what I think happens to the soul. If a fetus is aborted the soul neither goes to heaven or hell. That soul will just be born to someone else and the mother’s life path will be the only one effected by her choices. It’s not a person so much as it was a potential person and now that potential will simply go somewhere else.

I guess if you don’t believe the pre-born aborted get another chance at life…well considering life is pain and then you die, I’d much rather go directly to heaven than live life. Then again this gets into a whole weird debate about what is the purpose of life? If its just “to earn the right to get to heaven,” but babies and children get to go directly…well better to die young then, right?

Maybe precisely because this is a religious debate is why no one ever brings up the issue of where the fetuses’ souls go. But it seems to me that so much of the language of anti-abortion rhetoric is steeped in religious overtones that anti-abortion groups should have an answer to this question. Where to the unborn souls go? I know what my answer to that question which informs my beliefs on this issue. How does their answer to the question inform theirs?

I'll Stop Posting About Abortion

When people stop planting bombs at abortion clinics.

An explosive device "which could have caused substantial harm" was found Wednesday in the parking lot of an Austin, Texas, women's clinic where abortions are performed, authorities said.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?! Don't they know they've pretty much legally won already? Frankly its shit like this that makes people declare themselves pro-choice because no one wants to be on the side of American al-Qaida.

There No Reason For This Post

Other than it's an awesome photo of Stephen Colbert. For a moment I thought that was George Will he was getting tatooed on his arm.

Shallow Reasons For Abortions?

Clearly I can’t stop talking about abortion this week. The resident conservative blogger at Balkinization wrote an article saying that Gonzales v. Carhart was right for the wrong (legal) reasoning. But then he adds this to his post:

"A late abortion may still be obtained for essentially any reason the woman chooses, including economics, social convenience, spite of a boy friend, and (probably) sex selection of children."

Which got me thinking, since there’s no license to have children, a woman might also have a child for any reason. To keep or spite a boyfriend, for economics (say a better inheritance or better divorce settlement), social acceptance, and yes, even sex selection. How many families had two children of the same sex and decided to have a third (or a fourth or a fifth) because they wanted at least one child of the opposite sex?

If you can abort a pregnancy for shallow reasons—which is supposedly a horrible thing—why isn’t the same moral outrage applied to those getting pregnant for “shallow” reasons?

Yes I’m only bringing this up because the frame of “the shallow-minded abortion” is stupid. Arguably it’s a worse crime to have a child for the wrong reasons than to abort a pregnancy for the wrong reasons. That’s because your fucked up kid might become my business—if they are abused, if they grow up to become criminals or just bad human beings. Ultimately your kid is going to have an impact on my universe by their very existence. That doesn’t give mean I get veto power over everyone’s reproductive rights but it means your decision to have a kid effects me a hell of a lot more than your aborted pregnancy does.

Most Cynical Use Of A Joke Ever

Apparently there’s a politician in Florida who thinks he can use Rep. Robert Wexler's pretty famous cocaine-and-hooker “joke” on The Colbert Report for political points.

Graber, who is apparently not the kind of guy to let a gag go unpunished, suggested Wexler may not have been joking when, egged on by Colbert, he looked into the camera and said he enjoys cocaine and prostitutes “because it’s a fun thing to do.”

“There are many ways to look at it,” Graber said. “Maybe he was shocked and the truth came out.”

I’m not sure there is a more cynical political ploy than this one. This might even beat out the people who wanted to pretend that John Kerry's botched joke meant he was saying our soldiers in Iraq were stupid people who didn't study hard enough in school. Then again it is Florida. There are a lot of out-of-touch seniors down there.

Taking My Bike (Out)

So today I decided to ride my bike to the Metro stop instead of either taking the bus or walking. It took about 7 minutes to ride there, a big improvement from the normal 22-minute walk.

And then I discovered I didn’t have the key to my bike lock.

So now what?

Well I had a couple of options. Option 1, ride back home. Option 2, walk or bike to the bike shop that’s about a half-mile down the street and buy another bike lock. Or there was option 3, leave the bike where it was, unlocked and bet that no one will steal it.

I will put better than even money the bike will still be there at 5:30 p.m. It’s sitting pretty inconspicuously amongst other (locked) bikes at a bike rack. But even more germane, anyone who takes the bike will have the same problem I have, it still has a bike lock on it without a key. I’m not sure where my key for that lock is.

The thing is that this is is not a valuable bike at all. The only value it has is the seat which I bought for about $40 four years ago. Considering I acquired the bike for free when someone left it on the side of the road with a sign that said “free” I would consider it an apt trade if someone took it. That’s ultimately why I’m almost rooting for it to be gone. It’s mostly something that sits and takes up room in my apartment. Plus, it would give me an excuse to buy my dream bike if I could ever come up with the money. Now there’s a bike I would ride (or so I tell myself).

UPDATE: Sweet! As predicted, my bike was still there. And, even better, I found my bike lock key!

Abortionists: Forced Sterilizations for Everyone!

Perhaps the timing was just to try to give me something to cheer up about the Supreme Court Partial-Birth Abortion decision, but slacktivist, who’s been dissecting Left Behind sentence by sentence for almost four years now, finally got to the passage in the first book I’ve been long waiting for, the only part that directly talks about abortion.

You don’t have to have read the book to understand that passage. Basically every child has been raptured up to heaven, even those in utero. So where does that leave all those wicked abortionists now? Seriously, there aren’t many other jobs out there that involve something like slaughtering puppies or tying maidens to railroad tracks. Slacktivist quotes from Left Behind (pp. 265-268):

Rayford had to admit he had never found Hattie guilty of brilliance, but now he wished he could look into her eyes. "Hattie, um, I don't know how to ask this. But are you saying your sister is hoping women can get pregnant again so they'll need abortions and she can keep working?"

"Well, sure. What is she going to do otherwise? Counseling jobs in other fields are pretty hard to come by, you know."

Well I suppose they could get jobs executing adults. I don’t think LaHaye is one of those namby-pamby Christians who is against the death penalty as well as abortion.

Go and read the whole post because it’s a classic. It’s the penultimate breakdown of an anti-abortionist's take on what motivates pro-choice individuals (especially women). And if you ever really wanted to see Left Behind: The Theory of Christianity According to Tim LaHaye, taken apart piece by piece read slacktivist’s entire series on it.

Bike Envy

I’m getting another severe case of object-envy. “Object envy” is when I start thinking that if I just buy this one cool thing I can turn my life around. This week, it’s a bike. The above bike actually.

I have a bike that I actually found on the side of the road four years ago with a sign saying “free.” It wasn’t bad so I grabbed it and I bought a new seat, a helmet and paid $40 for a tune-up. Problem is that in four years I’ve ridden it maybe a dozen times. If that much.

I’ve just never been very comfortable on a bike. Some of it is that I’m afraid of cars. Some of it is that I have a problem with balance. I actually fell off my bike once because I was unable to “jump” off the seat in time to keep myself from tipping over. Today I learned why that happened: my bike is too big for me. It’s not a matter of adjustment of the seat, it’s just the wrong size.

It wasn’t until I was at the bike store that I realized that being on a bike didn’t have to mean that my wrists should hurt (another issue, after 10 minutes of riding I’m putting a lot of stress on my wrists because the handlebars aren’t really very adjustable). That bike is like riding a chopper. It’s awesome. I started to think “hey maybe I would like biking if I was riding this.” (I don’t even have a bike rack for my car at the moment).

But the above bike is $460. There are slightly cheaper models, but after taxes and paying a bike shop to put it together it’s still going to be close to $375-$400. And considering I haven’t used my bike more than 2-3 times a year it’s hard to justifying spending that much on the theory I might do it more with better equipment.

I get this way about things sometimes. Last item I got really crazy it was about a set of kitchen chairs. I finally got them (at a good price) and I do love them. I do sit at my kitchen table more than I used to. But did it change my life? No, of course not.

Living in a materialistic society that encourages you to think you can buy your way to happiness sometimes makes it hard to decipher when you can buy something to make an improvement on your life. There are always things I want to buy because they just give me pleasure. Sometimes they are cheap, like a salt/sugar rimmer for cocktails ($8). Sometimes they are expensive like my iPod Nano ($230). It's the concept of "buying this makes me cool." Whether its technology or a better-looking rug.

It’s easy to glorify exercise purchases. It’s easy to think “if I just buy (this exercise-related purchase) it will make me healthier and justify its expense.” But if it’s just a case of object-envy I’m not sure that a bike is anything different then the chairs I bought. After all, they’re both places to park my ass.

Jericho: The Anti-Torture Show

Proof that some people in Hollywood have been paying attention to all the hoopla about the torture on 24, a line on last night’s Jericho:

What works is the fear of torture. Real torture – that only works in the movies.

It’s kind of a nice rejoinder to 24’s break-limbs-first-ask-questions-later methods. My only quibble is that, legally and ethically, threatening someone is mental torture, which is still torture.

The Day That Roe Died

Okay I know that, technically, the Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart decision did not kill Roe v. Wade. But I can’t help but thinking in about five years you’ll only be able to get a first-trimester abortion and then only in a few states like California, New York, and Washington State.

This is the decision that starts that process. Whether or not this decision ends up blocking only a kind of procedure or all second trimester abortions (a fear some groups have) it’s clearly the tip of the iceberg of the anti-abortion legislation that is going to come faster than anti-abortion trolls on a pro-choice blog.

I'll have more to say later, but the crux is that it's time to dig up Alice Paul. Sorry old girl, I know you died 30 years ago but we need you again.

Pear Is The New Pomegranate

So looks like Slate’s Jacob Weisberg is wrong. Green tea-the-flavor is so over by the time its used in body washes. However I was wrong about pomegranate. Pear is the new cocktail flavor du jour.

I love complicated cocktails but there’s no way I’m gathering up all the ingredients for this pear cocktail. At least at home (too expensive) but I’d love to try it in a bar. Might be worth the money if it actually comes with a slice of pear.

Learning To Blog In Drips and Drabs

Today I figured out how to add a counter to my website. I'd make it public but I'm afraid of the low-number. Wish I had done this months ago.

Now I need to figure out how to add some permanent posts (like an "About Me") link on the left hand side. Screwing with the template code always makes me nervous.

Also I want to add a logo to the top upper left corner. I have a really cute idea for a great logo/photo. My roommate's cat is always reading the newspaper. He needs to be my official spokescat. But I need a cat wrangler. Maybe my roommate will help.

Tipping Bartenders At Weddings (and Other Functions)

I went to a Batz Mitzvah over the weekend and the party was at a country club. I’m about to say something a little judgmental about my relatives, and for the break in agreed protocol, for the record I did say this directly to them. I got into a discussion with some relatives about tipping bartenders at these kinds of “free bar” functions. I was tipping, in fact when one bar tender took the time to make me a drink to a bit more specification, I tipped her $2. There was no “tip jar” on the table. When I asked about that the woman said “we’re not allowed to have it on the table but we can accept tips.” I took this to mean the club probably has some kind of rule that they think a tip jar makes them look cheap. However I also wondered if that meant they got a better hourly wage.

In any case I was tipping and to my surprise I found that some of my relatives (the older ones) not only didn’t tip but explicitedly said “you don’t tip at these kind of events.” I thought “free drinks” meant you should have even more reason to tip?

Also considering this was a Batz Mitzvah, not a wedding, half the guests weren’t legal drinking age anyway. I bet the bartenders made less than $15 in tips the whole night (including my $4). But then again maybe they were being paid between $7-10 an hour to serve when an actual bartender tends to make half-wages and then the rest in tips. (It was probably a five to six hour shift).

Radio Misogyny Finally Eats One Of Its Own

I’ve been following the Don Imus troubles and one way of looking at the story is “why can a guy lose a job over three words?” But another way of looking at it is that Imus’ racist, misogynist stick finally caught up to him. I think, on average, its not really acknowledged just HOW misogynistic radio is. I don’t listen to Imus, but wonder if he really can be all that much worse than Mancow or Adam Corrolla. Anyway this Bob Herbert op-ed in the NY Times pretty much says it all.

Paying the Price

By BOB HERBERT
Published:
April 12, 2007

You knew something was up early in the day. As soon as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write about the "60 Minutes" piece, which was already in pretty wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We'll get back to you, they said.

In a "60 Minutes" interview with Don Imus broadcast in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the "Imus in the Morning" program, "It's dirty and sometimes racist."

Mr. Imus then said: "Give me an example. Give me one example of one racist incident." To which Mr. Wallace replied, "You told Tom Anderson, the producer, in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk is there to do nigger jokes."

Mr. Imus said, "Well, I've nev - I never use that word."

Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson, his producer.

"Tom," he said. "I'm right here," said Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, "Did I use that word?"

Mr. Anderson said, "I recall you using that word."

"Oh, O.K.," said Mr. Imus. "Well, then I used that word. But I mean - of course, that was an off-the-record conversation. But --"

"The hell it was," said Mr. Wallace.

The transcript was pure poison. A source very close to Don Imus told me last night, "They did not want to wait for your piece to come out."

For MSNBC, Mr. Imus's "nappy-headed ho's" comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team was bad enough. Putting the word "nigger" into the so-called I-man's mouth was beyond the pale.

The roof was caving in on Mr. Imus. More advertisers were pulling the plug. And Bruce Gordon, a member of the CBS Corp. board of directors and former head of the N.A.A.C.P., said publicly that Mr. Imus should be fired.

But some of the most telling and persuasive criticism came from an unlikely source - internally at the network that televised Mr. Imus's program. Women, especially, were angry and upset. Powerful statements were made during in-house meetings by women at NBC and MSNBC -about how black women are devalued in this country, how they are demeaned by white men and black men.

White and black women spoke emotionally about the way black women are frequently trashed in the popular culture, especially in music, and about the way news outlets give far more attention to stories about white women in trouble.

Phil Griffin, a senior vice president at NBC News who oversaw the Imus show for MSNBC, told me yesterday, "It touched a huge nerve."

Whether or not Mr. McGuirk was hired for the specific noxious purpose referred to in the "60 Minutes" interview, he has pretty much lived up to that job description. He's a minstrel, a white man who has gleefully led the Imus pack into some of the most disgusting, degrading attempts at racial (not to mention sexist) humor that it's possible to imagine.

Blacks were jigaboos, Sambos and Brilloheads. Women were bitches and, above all else, an endless variety of ever-ready sexual vessels, born to be degraded.

The question now is how long the "Imus in the Morning" radio show will last. Just last month, in a reference to a speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Selma, Ala., Mr. McGuirk called Mrs. Clinton a bitch and predicted she would "have cornrows and gold teeth" by the time her presidential primary campaign against Senator Barack Obama is over.

Way back in 1994, a friend of mine, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, a terrific reporter and columnist at The Daily News and Newsday, mentioned an Imus segment that offered a "satirical" rap song that gave advice to President Clinton on what to do about Paula Jones: "Pimp-slap the ho." Mr. Nelson also wrote that there was a song on the program dealing with Hillary Clinton's menstrual cycle.

So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long, long time. There was nothing new about the tone or the intent of Mr. Imus's "nappy-headed ho's" comment. As Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told me the other night, "It's a long pattern of behavior, and at some point somebody has to say enough is enough."

The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus's pathetically infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.

It appears that on this issue the general public, and the women at Mr. Imus's former network, are far ahead of the establishment figures, the politicians and the media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.

That is a very good sign.

Sex, Desire And Watching Monkeys Do It

The New York Times has a fascinating article about men and women’s sexual arousal and desire triggers.

Birds Do It. Bees Do It. People Seek the Keys to It.

In a series of studies at the University of Amsterdam, Ellen Laan, Stephanie Both and Mark Spiering demonstrated that the body’s entire motor system is activated almost instantly by exposure to sexual images, and that the more intensely sexual the visuals, the stronger the electric signals emitted by the participants’ so-called spinal tendious reflexes. By the looks of it, Dr. Laan said, the body is primed for sex before the mind has had a moment to leer.

There are many interesting parts to the article, one part that stood out suggested that not all men actually are programmed to rape. First they hooked men’s gentials up to a machine and tested their, ahem, “tumescence.” (I love it when the NY Times gets all coy).

More intriguing still were the divergent sexual responses between men who ranked high on the inhibition scale and those who scored low. Whereas both groups reacted to the nonthreatening sex scenes with an equivalently hearty degree of tumescence, only the low scorers — those whose answers to the questionnaire indicated they had scant sexual inhibition — maintained an enthusiastic physiological response when confronted with film clips of sexual brutality.

The results suggest that having a good set of sexual brakes not only dampens the willingness to commit rape or sexual abuse, but the desire as well, giving the lie to notions that “all men are the same” and would be likely to rape their way through the local maiden population if they thought they could get away with it.

It doesn’t explain why mens’ arousals might diverge, just that it does. I suspect it’s probably more nurture than nature.

However that’s not even the most shocking part of the article. One study basically says women get turned on by watching sex of any kind, including monkey sex.

Women’s genitals, it seems, respond to all sex, all the time. Show a woman scenes of a man and a woman having sex, or two women having sex, or two men, or even two bonobos, Dr. Chivers said, and as a rule her genitals will become measurably congested and lubricated, although in many cases she may not be aware of the response.

Of course then the doctor speculates that this might be because women are programmed to be raped all the time which I find not a particularly satisfying hypothesis.

Again, the why of it remains a mystery. Dr. Chivers and others have hypothesized that the mechanism is protective. Women are ever in danger of being raped, they said, and by automatically lubricating at the mere hint of sex, they may avoid damage during forced intercourse to that evolutionarily all-important reproductive tract.

Eh, he’s just speculating, the guy doesn’t really know why this might happen.

Anyway weirdest passage in the article:

In any given individual, each pedal may be easier or harder to press. One person may be quick to become aroused, but equally quick to stifle that response at the slightest distraction. Another may be tough to get started, but once galvanized "will not lose sexual arousal even if the ceiling comes down," Dr. Janssen said. Still another may be saddled with both a feeble sexual accelerator and an overzealous sexual inhibitor, an unenviable pairing most likely correlated with a taste for beige pantsuits and the music of Loggins and Messina.

Can anyone explain what that even MEANS????

This Space Left Space

Green Tea the Wonder Drug

Slate has an incredibly snarky article on how green tea is being marketed as the health flavor-extract-product you can add to anything to cleanse your soul, extract fat from your milkshake, and blackheads from your pores. Personally I think Jacob Weisberg is about a year too late with this observation. (This just in: Ugg boots are quite popular amongst the Hollywood set!) It’s pomegranate that is the up-and-comer wonder flavor/extract/product, and even that is about to peak soon.

He also makes the really dated (albeit still accurate) note that Starbucks is actually selling milkshakes and not coffee.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone, a cosmetologist and diet-book author, made a mint after he told Oprah she would lose 10 pounds in six weeks if she switched from coffee to green tea. (This might actually happen to some people, but from cutting out the cream and sugar, not the coffee.)

Ten pounds is a lot, and it does make me wonder what “kind” of coffee someone is drinking. However losing 10 pounds over the course of a year doesn’t sound unreasonable or even unlikely if someone was a heavy coffee drinker and didn’t take their coffee black. And I am one of those people. Just this morning I just shelled out $4 for a medium vanilla non-fat latte. It’s not something I have every morning, or even every week, but I probably drink a mocha or a latte semi-frequently. (My reasoning, if I can shell out $4.50 for a cider and buy 2-3 a night why is buying a $4 latte a less rational choice?)

Weisberg has a point about green tea being marketed as Orientalism in consumerist form. (“Hey Asians are skinny and live long, so you can to!”) but he is pretty dismissive about drinking green tea itself. However I have noticed that, for myself at least, its an all-around different kind of drink. Everything else I drink, aside from water, is sweet. I don’t even drink beer (did I mention the cider?) My coffee is even extra, extra-sweet. (I blend a mixture of Sweet’n’low and real sugar).

What’s odd is that while I drink juice, milk, sodas, diet sodas, sweetened iced tea and incredibly sweet cocktails, I actually like it when my (hot) green tea is straight up. No sugar. I don’t even like the green teas that are blended or “fruity.” Give me a nice grassy tasting kind.

For whatever reason, green tea is calming and I do think makes me think sharper. If I have two cups of coffee I can start feeling wired in a wound-up way (which could be the sugar). If I have two cups of green tea I start feeling philosophical. (I used to order it in coffee shops if I wanted to study for a while). Plus, while green tea goes cold, it reheats well, unlike coffee. I can make a pot, drink half, and an hour later pour a cup and reheat it. It’s fine.

So thinking about this here’s my plan. For a month, I’m only going to allow myself one day a week to drink coffee (usually this’ll be Sunday). Let’s see in four weeks (May 6) if there’s any day-to-day difference I can notice.

UPDATE: 4/16/07
Who am I kidding??? I have been "cheating" on this plan already. I've been drinking coffee all weekend and today, due to extreme tiredness at work, I'm allowing myself my first "weekday" cup.

Presidential Recount: The Movie

The Hill seems to seriously doubt that a movie about the 2000 presidential recount that is funded by, written by, and directed by Democrats could be “unbiased.”

HBO is planning to make an unbiased film, titled “Recount” and scheduled to premiere early next year, about the 2000 presidential election.That could be difficult, if not impossible, to pull off, because the director, executive producer, and writer of the movie are all Democrats. Oh, and Colin Callender, the president of HBO Films, is also a D.

The Hollywood Reporter this week quoted Callender as saying the movie won’t take sides and instead would be “a fascinating look at democracy.” Callender has made political donations to then-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

The Hill is right to figuratively roll its eyes, but that’s just because looking at this movie using the terminology of “bias” is the wrong way to judge it. It seems as if it was the president of HBO Films who decided that was how he wanted this movie to be judged. (Although I can’t discount the fact that it might have been the reporter at The Hollywood Reporter who selected the frame, “Can your movie be unbiased” and then The Hill, in turn, is amplifying the concept of “bias versus unbiased” as a way screen the movie.)

I'm not certain but it seems like this is going to be a scripted drama, not a documentary. Personally I think this is unwise. It's extremely difficult to dramaticize recent events that everyone has their own personal "memory" of because the audience will think about what parts of the story the director isn't telling. (And it's impossible to tell all stories at once).

Bias is the wrong way to judge movies. There’s no such thing as programming without a point of view. Any editorial choice reflects the bias of the creator. There’s no person out there who lacks biases. It’s just not possible.

I would say if you need a yardstick to judge a fictional movie about history what you are looking for is accuracy. To use the term “bias” is to imply that a film can’t be accurate. But even an accurate film can't cater to all viewpoints simultaneously. Ultimately it will have a point-of-view.

And it was downright stupid for HBO to try to claim otherwise because it's a perfect strawman to set aflame.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky: The Penis Branding Company

Seth Stevenson at Slate has a pretty awesome slam against the ad agency that brought you the creepy Burger King and the “man food” ads.

What I really like about the article is that he manages to notice a not-too-subtle trend in all of the ads coming from the same ad agency: no matter the product, it’s only for dicks. (Literal and figurative).

Crispin also appears to have a strange obsession with dictating the bounds of male identity. In the "Un-pimp Your Ride" spots for VW, a somewhat cruel protagonist ridicules young men who dare to seek self-expression through the art of modifying their cars. In the "Making Things Right" campaign for Haggar, two middle-aged guys gruffly rule their suburban neighborhood—advocating physical force against any young men who dare to wear earrings, or listen to rap music, or date your daughter. And then there's that Man Law campaign for Miller, where the concept achieves its most literal form.

Which makes me think there’s an awesome Saturday Night Live sketch in there somewhere when Cripin Porter & Bogusky via for the Tampax tampon campaign. I can just picture them having young women brag about having the heaviest menstrual period. “Mine is way heavier than yours.”

Dumping Dan Savage

There’s a lot of reasons why someone might choose not to read Savage Love anymore. But this article, doesn’t make much sense.

Novak Does A Solid For Fred

Novak’s column in the Post today is all about showing conservatives that Fred Thompson really could be their guy.

I met Fred Thompson in 1974 when he was Howard Baker's 31-year-old minority counsel on the Watergate investigation. I considered him cool, careful and conservative. He still is, and that is how he would run for president, which appears in the offing.

I’m really wondering why Novak likes Thompson? Just because he was conservative in 1974 (which meant something different than it does today) doesn't mean he might not be a bit more wobbly today. This is a guy who has spent a lot of time with homosexuals and liberals in the world of theatre after all (I'm just assuming). I'm sure being surrounded by loose women, cocaine and Dick Wolf hasn't changed his opinions on anything since 1974.

I would have expected Novak to be a tiny bit more cautious in promoting Thompson. Novak’s column is doing two things really; one telling people Thompson could be their conservative candidate and the other saying he really is serious about running.

But it he? I kind of doubt it. I think he’s flirting with the media attention the same way Al Gore is. He wants to be drafted but he isn’t really certain he wants the hard work of running.

What’s particularly interesting to note is that Novak raises that Thompson’s already got a rap against him for what you might call “laziness.”

The rap is that he does not burn the midnight oil -- the identical criticism of Reagan. That carping may betray resentment that Thompson has emerged as a full-blown contender without backbreaking campaign travel and tedious fundraising.

Or maybe it represents a real concern that Republicans, after watching a distant CEO president (Senor Above-it-All) wreck their party, actually want to bring in a guy with strong opinions of his own and someone who will do the work of reading briefing memos. You would think that Republican donors, no less than Democrats, don’t want to hand a nomination, much less a presidency again to someone who seems lazy and isn't all that certain he wants the job.

Is It Egotistical To Assume Someone Reads Your Blog?

Way back in the long, long ago time when the internet was still powered by two hamsters running in wheels (which later was changed to gerbils because they run faster), I had a gay friend who talked about his website and how he used it as his diary.

“That’s stupid,” I said. “It’s not really a diary if you want other people to read it. It’s just an ego-thing. You just want people to care enough about you to read your thoughts about your life.”

My friend denied that was his motivation, ego-tripping. But he did tell me one thing, that he sometimes used his journal to write things about people in his life that he wouldn’t say to them and then basically wait for them to read about it. A very passive-aggressive way of passing messages.

I guess I’m bringing up this story because I’ve been fighting two urges recently. Take this blog public in the sense of stripping it of anything deeply personal or embarrassing, or just say “fuck it” and write what I want about myself. Blog out-loud, as it were.

I do read other people’s personal blogs. (And if anyone wants their blog to be read by me, post a comment. I think I have tracked back everyone who posted and wasn’t anonymous.) I don’t follow them every day, but I might read a month or so of postings in a stretch. I usually like reading the very first blog post because I’m always curious what motivated someone to start the blog. I find the more deeply personal someone else’s blog is the more interesting it is to me.

But I recently had a mixer with some fairly well-known (well known to me at least) writers and bloggers. And I was just dying to show them my blog. But I couldn’t. There’s a little too much of me remaining and I don’t think the blog is interesting enough to show off yet. Weight-blogging, date-blogging, job-blogging, these are ways of blowing off steam. Not unlike writing in a diary. But there is an ego-trip about blogging about yourself. You are hoping someone cares. Maybe a stranger, but someone is going to read your life and find it interesting. But what happens when potential (or current) employers and dates find these things? Not to mention family and friends? Do you really want your relatives to know that much about you?

I’ve talked about not writing about people I know anymore, but this is a little different. What happens when a future (or current) employer finds out about my James Frey moment? (Still one of my personal favorite posts.) Or how I talk about blogging at work?

The ironic thing is some of the jobs I’m applying for are to be a paid blogger. But no one wants to pay me to write about my life. I wish I was David Sedaris but I’m not (at least not yet). And I'm not living in Iraq or some other kind of interesting situation.

Let’s face it. Writing about your life is easy. It takes no research. It takes very little to craft a post about yourself. But writing about pop culture or politics in a way that someone else wants to read? Well that takes a little skill. And it’s a competitive market, lots of eyeballs but there's probably 100 blogs for every pair of eyes who want to read about Aaron Sorkin.

I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do. If I strip out the embarrassing stuff a lot would have to go, some of which I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of yet. But in the spirit of this post, here are some of the personal blogs I’ve read from time to time and I’ll add more as I think of them.

Dan Blog
The Virgin Files (So out-loud I wish she’d write more)
Weight Watchers, eh? (She’s Canadian)
Mental Hygiene Unit (A divorced child-free vegan with talent, she blogs out-loud hard)
The World of Von
Jon’s Blog (An actual friend of mine)
And said friend’s wife (they’re having twins!)

More On Torture And “24”

The American Prospect has written about another event involving the writers of “24” and real live (former) torturers getting together. Although actually the article doesn’t really talk much about “24.”

Tony Lagouranis is a 37-year-old bouncer at a bar in Chicago's Humboldt Park. He is also a former torturer. That was how he was described in an email promoting a panel discussion, "24: Torture Televised," hosted by the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security in New York on March 21. And he doesn't shy away from the description.

One nugget is that the article ends up damning The Atlantic Monthly as more responsible for promoting torture than “24.”

Back during the NYU event, Lagouranis had sat behind a long table on a stage with his sleeves rolled up and his arms folded across his chest. Toward the end of the discussion, he leaned forward and told the audience that, ultimately, the abuse of prisoners could not be blamed on shows like 24. "I'm from New York City. I'm college-educated," he said. "But you put me in Iraq and told me to torture, and I did it and I regretted it later."

But he says a 2003 article from Atlantic Monthly had a huge impact.

Some of the soldiers and officers had been influenced by Mark Bowden's October 2003 Atlantic Monthly article, "The Dark Art of Interrogation," which describes techniques that, in the author's words, are "excruciating for the victim" yet "leave no permanent marks and do no lasting physical harm."

"It seems to me Bowden was advocating what he calls 'torture lite,'" Lagouranis tells me. "That made an impression on a lot of people. The feeling was that what we had been taught about the Geneva Conventions was not going to be followed anymore. We would be following a new set of rules -- and that was what Bowden was talking about."

I’ve noticed in some op-eds there’s kind of a pat saying that torture ends up harming the torturer more than the victim. At least psychologically, the victims can recover, but the torturers are scarred for life. Maybe that’s true, but it’s clearly not true in all cases.

I remember when Sister Dianna Ortiz published her memoir of her was abduction, rape and torture in El Salvador. She was one of the four infamous American nuns who were, almost accidentally it seems, victims of the civil war in 1989. (The big deal was when Americans nuns were picked up suddenly the American media started paying attention to the violence in the region). I have not read her memoir, but in reviews I read one of them commented that Ortiz says herself that she is not quite whole from her experience.

It struck out at me at the time because you often don’t read narratives where the ending is “Yes I am still kind of broken by the experience. It didn’t kill me but it didn’t make me stronger either.”

The Buddhist part of me wants to say the only way Lagouranis can recover is if he devotes his life to undoing the harm that he has done. He can’t erase his crimes but he can make up for them. He doesn’t need counseling to “get over” what he did. He needs to help his victims.

Nerdy Bar Games For Washington Types

My roommate and I move in feminist circles and one night I challenged her to name all 16 female senators. (No using the internet, cheater!) I'm not saying this is information every person should know (like the way you should be able to name your own senators) but for nerdy, feminist, DC types it makes a good bar game. I started playing it last night at a networking happy hour and it turned out beautifully. People started talking to each other and larger groups of people slowly got involved.

An alternative game, strictly for DC people: list as many Representatives as you can in 2 minutes (this is a team exercise.) It's like "DC Boggle" really.

Okay sure, someone told me this sounded "boring" but I think DC media types actually enjoy the chance to show off this knowledge. It's the one thing we excel in over other parts of the country, useless knowledge about Congress that our friends and relatives don't know.

Blogging Ain’t Pretty: It's Thursday And Gonzales Is Still Around

A commenter reminded me that this post still is up. Now what most of you don’t know if that on Tuesday there was an “announcement by Bush about the attorney general” and for about a half-hour I thought Bush was about to announcement Gonzales’ resignation. So I crafted a post: “I Called It!!!” Had you visited my site at 5:30 pm you might have seen it.

Of course 5:45 p.m. rolled around and showed how far I had put my foot in my mouth. (Yum...tasty ankle....) So while I deleted that post, I left up my predication. Why? Because sometimes blogging ain’t pretty.

And now I see Slate.com is starting “Gonzo-meter” where they track the daily chance of Gonzales’ resignation. Considering its Slate I’m pretty sure this now means his last day will be Jan. 20, 2009. Thanks Slate!

Tuesday Is The Day Gonzales Resigns

I’m just getting my bet in early. I predict it’ll be tomorrow he steps down. I remember correctly calling Harriet Mier's withdrawal . (My father'll back me up on that).

Yeah I'm playing around with digg. Still working out the kinks.

Tell Rahm Emanuel The Colbert Report Is Perfectly Safe

This came out in The Hill yesterday:

Emanuel tells freshmen to avoid Stephen Colbert

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the Democratic Caucus chairman, has told new Democratic members of Congress to steer clear of Stephen Colbert, or at least his satirical Comedy Central program, “The Colbert Report.”

“He said don’t do it … it’s a risk and it’s probably safer not to do it,” said Rep. Steve Cohen. But the freshman lawmaker from Tennessee taped a segment that last week was featured in the 32nd installment of the “Better Know a District” series. Colbert asked Cohen whether he was a black woman. He isn’t.

I actually have some experience advising a Congressman’s office about going on The Colbert Report. A while back I interviewed for a press secretary position with Rep. Brian Baird’s office (WA-3). I didn’t get offered the position but one of the things I discussed with his then-press secretary was whether to go on the Colbert Report. She said their office hadn’t made a decision yet, although some of the staffers wanted him to do it, she wasn’t sure.

I laid out a pretty passionate case why it was fine to do the show.

1. It’ll please your staff. (This is minor, but hey, it’ll boost morale).
2. It’s good practice for Congressmen who don’t get much national exposure.
3. It’ll humanize your Representative.
4. There really hasn’t been any lasting political image problems from doing these interviews.

I find all the talk about the “dangers” of doing the interviews and lasting PR problem to be way overblown. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla, who had a famous “Better Know A District” because Colbert got him to say “hookers and cocaine are fun things to do.” And of course you heard about Wexler’s overwhelmingly close re-election in 2006? What? No? You mean he still ran unopposed and the interview brought him a lot of ultimately positive name-recognition?

The other person who’s appearance was infamous (and the last sitting real Republican to appear on the segment) was Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., because he couldn’t name all of the Ten Comandments. Again, Westmoreland suffered VERY MINOR public relations feedback in relation to this appearance. And while going on The Colbert Report is relatively safe, it’s not entirely risk free. You will be ribbed a little. And you can still appear foolish.

But so what? For many of these Congressmen and women this appearance will be the first thing a national audience hears about them. And when the time comes for them to play on the national scene, audience recall of them will be generally positive. They are mostly low-risk, high-reward interviews. And moreover the people who have done them talk about how enjoyable they were to tape. Nerve-wracking? Maybe a little. But jeeze you gotta have some balls if you want to be a U.S. Congressman. If you can't handle doing an interview with a soft-ball comedian (he's not Borat for god's sake!) then maybe you don't really want a job in the public eye.

So anyways, when Brain Baird appeared on BKAD on Jan 17, 2007, with Colbert asking him to “eat his sausage” I felt like I was partially responsible for making that happen.

Jack Bauer Live And In Person

Is a really skinny dude. Seriously. His legs are like sticks. Highly coincidental of my constant recent musings on how 24 is hurting America suddenly I was thrust into a room with Kiefer Sutherland. Or rather I volunteered for a week at the DC International Film Festival with the prospect of just such a meeting.

Okay I didn’t actually tell Kiefer that his show is hurting America. Mostly because I didn’t want to piss off the people I was working for. But really, I also got the sense that this guy is not a deep thinker. Of course it's possible it just wasn’t his night. Or maybe my impression was partially formed from the movie he was there to promote, “I Trust You To Kill Me”. But even at age 40, Kiefer Sutherland is still quite the male adolescent.

Personally pleasant to be sure. Book him for your event, y’all. He doesn’t disappoint or get grumpy. As a professional hire, I see no room for complaint. But as an added psychological observation; at age 40 he doesn’t give off a sense of someone who knows what it’s like to be an adult and not an overripe 20-something. (The best approximation is that he’s like’s Paul Giamatti’s actor friend in Sideways, only not desperate because Kiefer actually has professional success. Charming, but shallow and somewhat self-destructive.)

I Trust You To Kill Me is ostensibly a “band road trip” documentary but really its all about Kiefer rather than about the band, Rocco DeLuca (which every time I heard his name I kept recalling Rocco of The Restaurant). I give Rocco DeLuca and the Burden credit for actually being really, really good. Good enough I’m going to try to find their CD. But in a way they are diminished by their association with Kiefer. His stardom blocks their talent. Basically Kiefer is more interesting to watch than Rocco.

Update: Okay after finding stuff like this I feel a little bit shitty calling the guy shallow. I stand my evaluation of his nature, but that doesn't mean he can't be a perfectly decent person. Some adolescents are.

Working From Home

I’m sort of lucky to be working from home today but I’m also realizing that “working from home” isn’t as much fun as advertised.

I'll try to remember this feeling if I ever get the desire to go back to freelancing or start to think telecommuting is the way to go.

Sneak Review Of The 300: The Gayest Movie Ever!

I got to go to the movie critics screening of the 300 tonight. Short version: gayer than a chorus line. Longer version: Like someone made a movie just cut from the battle sequences of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. (Just try to watch the movie and not think of lines from LoTR. It was all I could do not to shout at the screen Mystery Science Theater 3000-style.)

The movie is based on Frank Miller’s comic book and, while it’s not shot as artfully as Sin City, it bares a similar sense of masculinity and femininity. But while Sin City was all about noir atmosphere and crime, the 300 is all about manliness. From men wearing leather diapers. Really. (Meanwhile the women all have nipples to cut glass on. I don’t think there’s a single female actress in the movie who doesn’t bare her nubbins.)

The dialogue tries to make the struggle to be one about freedom versus tyranny, but frankly the lines are just cardboard staging for men who seems like they just can’t wait to die for trivial reasons. It kind of makes them seem more like little boys than the manliest of men.

While the movie reportedly is about Earth, circa 480 BC it really seems more like it belongs to the world of Middle Earth. When the men of Sparta take on Persian Immortals it’s really an orc beneath the mask, not a human. (There are also cave trolls and oliphaunts in the movie.) However, artistically the sci-fi feelings was something I would put in the movie’s favor. It ends up being very, well not exactly pretty but interesting to look at. The story, however, is really just one big battle. It’s actually being released on IMAX and I’m almost tempted to pay the $10 just to see if it’s better as an “image” film rather than a story.

Last comment, after seeing this and Sin City (which I preferred) I really do have to wonder how gay is Frank Miller? Because for a straight guy, the dude is obsessed with sweaty, bloody dudes acting out Fight Club-style. (Hmmm...maybe David Fincher and Frank Miller should be paired together?)

X-treme Eating!!!!!

I’m making fun of the title a bit (because calling anything “x-treme” these days sounds passé) but the Center for Science in the Public Interest does have an interesting report on the truly calorie-laden dishes at mainstream chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesdays, Cheesecake Factory, Uno Chicago Grill, and Cold Stone Creamery.

“Burgers, pizzas, and quesadillas were never health foods to begin with, but many restaurants are transmogrifying these foods into ever-more harmful new creations, and then keeping you in the dark about what they contain,” said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). “Now we see lasagna with meatballs on top; ice cream with cookies, brownies, and candy mixed in; ‘Ranchiladas,’ bacon cheeseburger pizzas, buffalo-chicken-stuffed quesadillas, and other hybrid horribles that are seemingly designed to promote obesity, heart disease, and stroke.”

Actually from a public relations point of view, I admire the way the report is put together. They use pictures and short blurbs. There’s a regular press release but the “report” is more like a three-page flyer.

Now there’s a little bit of hyperbole in the sense that in order to make their point in a few cases, CSPI adds two items together to explain how bad the food is.

Though fast-food chains or coffee shops typically serve much smaller portions than these and other major table-service restaurants, they too can provide some startlingly high-calorie items. A venti-sized White Chocolate Mocha and a blueberry scone from Starbucks would provide 1,100 calories—or about as much as one would find in a Burger King bacon double cheeseburger, medium fries, and medium Coke.

So do people typically order both the LARGEST SIZE mocha (actually, make that white-chocolate mocha, so it has extra syrup in it) and a scone? Maybe in some cases. Maybe in a lot of cases for all I know. I’m just pointing out that I do think the VP from Rudy Tuesdays has a bit of a point here.

Of course, most restaurants also offer less bulge-inducing options. Richard Johnson, senior vice president for Ruby Tuesday, noted that his chain also features lower-calorie menu items, including grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, a salad bar and other healthier fare.

“We think it’s interesting that they chose two of the items on the menu that are probably the highest-calorie items,” he said of the Center for Science in the Public Interest report.

But that said I think the Center’s main point, that restaurants are actually making their entrees tastier by packing on dangerous amounts of calories and then doing what they can to hide how unhealthy it is, is valid.

The one about Cold Stone Creamery got to me. (Maybe because it’s the one restaurant I have frequented). Even the sizes at CSC “Gotta Have It, Love It and Like It” are trying to keep people from recognizing their choices are “the large/medium/small.” (Of course, in practice I’ve noticed people still tend to order things as “small/medium/large” because people hate calling things by stupid marketing names.)

The issue with portion-control is that it’s really hard to track. I think I’ve talked about this study about bowl-size and appetite before and how this guy showed that even people who KNOW that bowl-size/plate-size effects how much they eat still fall into the same trap of eating more if the bowl/plate is larger. Moving ice cream from the regular sugar cone to the waffle cone (and then chocolate-coating the waffle cone) guarantees you’ll want to pack more ice cream in your waffle cone.

Proof That If You Want Your White House Criticism To Get Reported, Mention “24”

So apparently there’s going to be (or was last Saturday) an exercise by the administration to see how the government would respond to an IED (improvised explosive device) even though there’s no such inkling of this kind of attack taking place in the U.S. In Iraq, every fucking day, but not here.

So Jim Moran (who long timer readers know my fondness for) manages to get his critique of this “plan” reported about by comparing it to a TV show. I’m just saying, the press love writing about TV. You got a criticism you want to air, try to compare it to a Top 10 show.

Malaysia Wants to Ban Fast Food Advertising

It’s an interesting idea that Malaysia has, they essentially want to treat fast food like how cigarettes are treated in this country, as something dirty. They’re also thinking about a “Sin Tax.”

“This is the only country where people discuss over breakfast where and what to eat for lunch. And then over lunch, it will be what’s for supper,” he noted.

Dr Chua said obesity, which was the “root of all problems,” now affected 37% of the population, compared to 20% a decade ago.

About 12% of the population would suffer from diabetes by 2020 if nothing were to be done, he said.

I’m reminded of Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” a bit. Just in the concept of how islands are good test cases for larger populations. So if Malaysia’s health crumbles it’s not hard to see that America’s would fall a similar trend line. (Basically wasn’t American Samoa that case? Introduce an American-style diet and watch the population in one generation just start dropping dead of heart disease and diabetes?)

In Malaysia’s case I’m using “they” but it seems like it’s only their Health Ministry or Health Minister that is thinking about this change. And it’s likely to encounter resistance in other parts of the government.

I think it’s a real open question whether a nation can collectively change dietary habits for the better. (They can always change for the worse). I’m not saying that everyone in Malaysia or America will become optimally healthy, but it does seem that our collective eating patterns, the national diet if you will, are designed to make us fat. Is it possible to change a national diet to something better? I’m skeptical, but the increased focus on national eating patterns (rather than individual eating habits) has been a move in the right direction.

When patterns effect large populations I’m always more interested in macro explanations then the micro ones. You can come up with an individual explanation why every fat person in America is overweight but when more people are overweight than healthy isn’t it useful to look at the reasons why those trends are occurring than to argue that each individual needs to do better? (Not that I’m not trying to do my part, but I’m also white, middle-class and come from an upper-middle class background. I have better opportunities afforded to me than many trying to lose weight.)

Joel Surnow loves Joe McCarthy?

The Washington Post has an interesting push-back on that New Yorker article about torture on 24. The Post’s Peter Carlson just rolls his eyes that ANYONE could ever possibly take their cues from television.

Am I crazy or is attacking torture by lobbying the producers of "24" almost as ridiculous as trying to make nuclear power plants safer by urging the producers of "The Simpsons" to stop letting Homer play with plutonium in the lunchroom of the Springfield nuke plant?

Yes because we know TV is not an influential medium at all. Even though the people who teach at West Point have said, directly, 'people are looking at 24 and thinking it represents a rational line of thought.' Yes it’s “art” but there is a saying “life imitates art” for a reason.

I even pulled out this old quote from Chris Matthews (from the Washington Post) where here’s a life-imitating-art-imitating-life.

"You know what I find sometimes when I am drifting sometimes on this show, and we do five hours a week? I can't really assume a spontaneous attitude about a guest, so I find myself locking into you. I find myself doing Darrell Hammond doing me, because it's sort of comfortable to get into that sort of slipstream of the way you do me. Isn't that weird?"

-- "Hardball" TV commentator Chris Matthews to his "Saturday Night Live" impersonator, Darrell Hammond. "Yes, that's weird," Hammond agreed. Washington Post February 9, 2004

Anyway the most interesting nugget from Carlson’s article is that Sunrow, who is totally cozy with neo-fascist Ann Coulter, is now collaborating with her on what Surnow describes as “a movie that depicted Joe McCarthy as an American hero.”

I thought Ann had abandoned her crazy line of thinking that people were going to start lining up with Joe McCarthy again but clearly she’s been able to entice others into her way of thinking. And it doesn’t surprise me she picked the most fascist artist of the moment.

Torture on 24: Where Art Meets Reality

One of the issues I’m fascinated by is how TV influences real-life. Not just “serious” TV such as news (which ideally is supposed have influence) but entertainment. So I was super-fascinated to see this New Yorker article “Whatever it Takes” which reported on how the military has responded to the torture depicted in the series 24.

First of all, Human Rights First, had a pretty ingenious idea of setting up a meeting between real Army interrogators and Pentagon officials and the writers of 24. I so want to give props to them for that because you can write a 100 op-eds denouncing something on TV, but actually guilting a writer in person by the real-life people who do the jobs they depict is going to have an impact.

In fact, [U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point] and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”

Of course the show’s producer, self-described “right wing nutjob” (he really did call himself that!) bowed out for bullshit reasons.

Several top producers of “24” were present, but Surnow was conspicuously absent. Surnow explained to me, “I just can’t sit in a room that long. I’m too A.D.D.—I can’t sit still.”

Yeah right. More like “I completely don’t respect Human Rights First and don’t want any real facts from people in the know to change my political viewpoints about anything.”

Before the meeting, Stuart Herrington, one of the three veteran interrogators, had prepared a list of seventeen effective techniques, none of which were abusive. He and the others described various tactics, such as giving suspects a postcard to send home, thereby learning the name and address of their next of kin….

I didn’t find it surprising that the show’s head writer admitted that while he’s got some old CIA interrogation journal from 1963, most of the ideas for how to torture people he pulls right out of his ass. Because the show runner, Howard Gordon, isn’t an interrogation expect. He knows that pain scares him and assumes it scares other people. Very interestingly he knows how to create tension visually with a camera, but doesn’t know how to create tension with a suspect who’s being interrogated. It’s not unlike someone who isn’t a doctor or isn’t a lawyer writing a script for what they think those jobs look like. They’re probably convinced they know what it’s like but the reality is going to be incredibly different from a writer’s imagination.

At other moments, the discussion was more strained. Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

So here are the real people who do this job. And more importantly the teachers who are addressing the next generation who will be interrogating. And what are they saying? Look people are mimicking what they see on TV. The show’s writers basically say “well people know the difference between TV and real life.”

Actually, with discussion I’m sure they do but that involves actually engaging the brain in cognitive thought. But one aspect of TV is that is “normalizes” life. That’s why people are so eager to see themselves reflected back on TV. In Stephanie Coontz's “The Way We Never Were” she talks about why those corny 1950s “family-centered” programs were so addicting. Because they showed how “normal” families were supposed to act.

It’s natural for people to want to see how their actions follow an accepted practice. We are social creatures. One of the lines I really liked in the movie Kinsey was when Alfred Kinsey talks about how his students are desperate to know whether their sexual practices are “normal.” I’ve even caught myself in my own life thinking that because I saw something reflected on Sex in The City what I’m thinking of is an acceptable practice.

And this “normalizing” function isn’t just true for observing guidelines for sex and family life. It’s true for young officers and cadets learning what is acceptable behavior in treating prisoners. It’s fucking scary how the power of “art” has on real life actions sometimes. People love to mimics scenes from “glamorous” TV.

Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.” He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture “victim,” in a similar intimidation ploy. Lagouranis intervened: such scenarios constitute psychological torture.

I won’t even go on about the fact that so many lay-men don’t even get the fact that the “I’m not touching you” defense doesn’t mean you can threaten people with rape, death, death of family, or torture, even if you don’t go through with it. IT’S STILL ILLEGAL TORTURE.

So here are people who do the job that 24 writers portray and they say “yeah torture doesn’t work.”

…Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off.”

Moreover part of the issue in 24 is that the writers continue to set up situations where the audience and Jack Bauer absolutely know that who they have is guilty of something and, perhaps more importantly, they know what information their suspect has. That’s a key detail. In real life in Iraq or other places with the U.S. treads more often or not they simply have someone they suspect might be associated with something, but they don’t know exactly what. They don’t know what information the suspect actually has. I take that from this statement by the other interrogators. Just applying pain and hoping they start sprouting information that is new to the integrators is unlikely because the suspect wouldn’t know what you know about them.

“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

But the show’s producer STILL insists that sometimes torture is necessary.

Cochran, who has a law degree, listened politely to the delegation’s complaints. He told me that he supports the use of torture “in narrow circumstances” and believes that it can be justified under the Constitution. “The Doctrine of Necessity says you can occasionally break the law to prevent greater harm,” he said. “I think that could supersede the Convention Against Torture.” (Few legal scholars agree with this argument.) At the meeting, Cochran demanded to know what the interrogators would do if they faced the imminent threat of a nuclear blast in New York City, and had custody of a suspect who knew how to stop it. One interrogator said that he would apply physical coercion only if he received a personal directive from the President. But Navarro, who estimates that he has conducted some twelve thousand interrogations, replied that torture was not an effective response.

I find that that attitude of Joel Cochran’s irritating. Here his is confronted with evidence that his belief is incorrect, torture doesn’t work, the situation he imagines it might work doesn’t happen ever, and more importantly if it ever did it still wouldn’t work, but he continues to stress he believes torture is sometimes necessary.

Beliefs are hard things to go away even with counter-evidence. In fact when given evidence that counters a belief people will often cling stronger to their assertion. Overtime, they might be willing to let go and allow the new facts to be processed. But often the brain will simply start screening out the new facts so as to keep the old belief.

Anyway I’m glad to hear that Kiefer Sutherland is growing concerned about the impact of torture. Even if he didn’t come to the meeting (which I wish he had) he’s clearly going to hear about it if not read that article. Other than the writers, he’s one of the “artists” in charge of 24 that can actually make a difference in the crafting of the show.

Why The Edwards Campaign Blew It With the Bloggers

With all the hubbub about the actions of the two bloggers hired by John Edwards, what I think is most misplaced is how the campaign really lost the chance to turn something that was a political weakness into a strength.

Think about it, it’s only February 2007. Campaigns might have a long tail but this story wasn’t going to last. Even Fox News was going to drop it soon enough. It was a weeklong story, at most, and the real audience for the story isn’t the conservative Republicans who watch Fox News or the handful of people who find what Donahue says interesting.

No, the audience for the story in February 2007 is Democratic primary voters and early donors. And guess what? They don’t find Donahue’s outrage all that newsworthy. What the early donors (both the big and the small) want is to know is that the Edwards campaign has a chance to win.

When the story broke in The New York Times (and AP) the Edwards campaign started running around like a chicken with their head cut off. What they should have done is waited. A week is an eternity in politics but there’s also got to be an adage that the farther from the primary the shorter the “entities in politics” lasts.

So if I had been on the Edwards team what would I have advised? Push-back. Let the cable news chatter. And then do some pitch back to friendly columnists. There were points to be made about all of Donohue’s outrages. All of the offensive statements he’s made in the past. How about a simple statement that most democratic voters don’t find Donohue a credible critic (while agreeing that you don’t agree with everything your employees write, you don’t enforce past-tense loyalty tests.)

I think there were many in the media who could have sympathized with the point that the ball can’t be moved so that campaigns are responsible for things that bloggers say before they are hired. (With the right framing). While there are lines, what Amanda and Melissa wrote would probably have been found less offensive than Donahue. Not to mention less offensive than other people, like Michelle Malkin, who were criticizing them. Use the opportunity to link Republican candidates cozying up to conservative bloggers and flash their most offensive statements. (These guys show up at CPAC don’t they?)

Frankly Edwards could have used the opportunity to make his campaign about highlighting the right wing noise machine. The early donors would have liked to see the energy and the ability to push-back. In way I miss “Slick Willie” for his deftness in going around (and sometimes through) personal attacks and coming out cleaner on the other side.

And furthermore the blogosphere would have started giving everything to back Edwards for showing loyalty to his employees AND for pushing back. In the end he might have been able to shift the frame away from “Does Edwards endorse everything his bloggers write” to “Are conservative politicians as much at risk for associating with bloggers?”

More On Gay Marriage.
Plus: Political blogging brings in the posters

First off I know I haven’t been posting much lately. I’m sorry. I’ve been depressed lately but in light of my promise I’m not going to drag my bad attitude in here.

However I find it interesting that my post about anti-gay marriage has attracted some attention (by “some” I mean any). I’m not going to argue with people who come here to post about it. Because we’re looking at the issue from two different dimensions. I’m looking at an apple and calling it a fruit and while they are calling it a piece of dense matter. There’s no common ground to which to hammer out dialogue in the culture war. There’s no starting point to agreement. We don’t agree about the terms of the debate or the stakes.

Besides what changes people’s minds isn’t arguing with strangers on the internet. It’s interpersonal communications in their real life. Knowing someone who is gay, having a gay family member. Maybe if Marshall McLuhan is right then watching a TV show about gay people might help.

But my blog isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. And they’re clearly not going to change mine. We’re looking at the same object but we can’t even think of common words to describe it.

No Marriage Without Procreation

This is the most awesome stunt ever! I wish I still lived in Seattle so I could write about it for The Stranger.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance (WA-DOMA) announced on Thursday that their proposed initiative to make procreation a requirement for legal marriage has been accepted by the Secretary of State and assigned the serial number 957.

That’s right anti-gay marriage types (and the passive majority who keeps voting for states’ anti-gay marriage bans). So if you want to keep saying that marriage is important because it produces children and that because gays can’t produce children they shouldn't be allowed to marry than its time to put your money where your big fat mouth is. No marriage for anyone who can’t or won’t produce children.

Yes it’s a stunt. But it’s a good one. It targets the bullshit right back squarely at the people who want to get upset about gays by using some cockamamie argument against gay marriage. (For the record, I don’t believe it’s possible to be accepting of gays but against gay marriage. I suspect anyone who is really against gay marriage is really just uncomfortable with gayness in general.)

Hat tip Feministing.

Howie Kurtz Doesn’t Praise The Politico, Color Me Shocked!

In the DC media market there’s been a lot of chatter about the new start up politics-centric newspaper-slash-website The Politico. Basically it’s well-funded and grabbed a couple of high-level reporters from The Post and a couple other places but it’s not offering a particularly unique product. There’s Roll Call, The Hill, National Journal, plus of course The Washington Post, and every other paper’s DC bureau.

Now, full disclosure, I applied for a job at The Politico but that’s just because it’s practically down the street from me and I’m unemployed. And no, I don’t think The Politico is anything special but I do believe that competition makes everyone perform better. I bet the very existence of The Politico is going to make all its competitors try harder for a little while.

Most though I want to smack Howie Kurtz on the nose for writing the kind of bitchy, gossipy bullshit “column” about a rival that I expect to find at one of two alternative weeklies sharing the same city.

So Howard Kurtz writes that:

The political-junkie Web site, led by two former Washington Post reporters, wasn't as jam-packed as I expected, or as colorful, and is rarely updated during the day. In fact, most of what is on Politico.com -- and the print version, distributed free mainly on the Hill -- could easily have run in an Old Media relic like this newspaper. It strikes me as solid and substantive, but not knocking anyone's socks off.

Wow, a rival editor who is now reviewing the new product of former colleagues and he finds it lacking? How shocking????

Since Harris and Jim VandeHei, the Politico's executive editor, left high-profile Post jobs in November to launch the site, there was plenty of bleating in the press about the imminent death of print and the ascendancy of the Web. Well, there's no question that online sites are hot, which is why newspapers are pouring resources into their digital operations (including an expanded politics section on washingtonpost.com that just happened to start up last week).

See, says Kurtz, us print newspapers are still the best place to get news. All we have to do is expand our existing sections. More Howard Kurtz please! I want him served up five days a week unvarnished.

Allen and Harris wrote of Hillary Clinton that her challenge was "convincing millions of people that the most famous woman on the planet -- someone who has been astride the national stage for 15 years -- is someone quite different than they think she is." If that sounds like a Post news analysis, maybe it's because they used to be the White House team here.

Or frankly still the old team since today’s front page above the fold story is “Mixed Reviews For Clinton In Iowa” (which should have been called “Post Reporters Are Not Impressed By Clinton’s Moves In Iowa Because We Think People Don’t Like Her And Are Determined To Prove Everyone Agrees With Us”)

Some items are way inside baseball, and a few stories -- such as "Health Problems Pose Governing Challenge," because the average age of senators has risen from 60 to 62 -- seem a bit of a stretch.

But dissing a rival newspaper staffed with former colleagues, that is totally something EVERYONE is interested in reading.

The Web site, which drew about 488,000 visitors in its first four days, is competing for advertising in a different arena: with Slate, Salon, National Review Online, Huffington Post, Instapundit and countless political blogs. Harris, for his part, is relieved that he got the thing up and running in the space of one month.

See those smucks aren’t the only web site competing for dollars. They’re doomed! Not like the Washington Post. They don’t compete for advertising dollars at all.

"I just hope people will judge us over time," he says. "We had never expected to create a revolutionary new brand of journalism on Day One."

And since you didn’t pass the Kurtz sniff-test on your first day, clearly you didn’t. Better give up your day job Jim VandeHei!

Chocolate Gum?

I love chocolate and I love gum. So what better than to combine the two great foods together?

I was in the local 7-11 (stomping ground for special additions and "new" candies) and I saw the Bubble Yum Chocolate. It was $.89 but I decided worth it just to try it out.

Chocolate-the-flavor doesn't often translate well. (See Skittles Ice Cream flavor, which includes "chocolate"). To give Bubble Yum credit, their verison of "Chocolate" is better than Skittles. Its chocolatier than Tootsie Pops (which I think is technically supposed to be fudge, isn't it?) but it's still not really chocolatey.

The other thing about the gum is that the flavor (while pleasant) fades really fast and then turns into an unpleasant flavorless gum with an artificial aftertaste. Yeah, chew this gum for 15 minutes and you'll want to start replacing the flavor in your mouth with mint or something.

Also, has anyone ever thought that Bubble Yum puts too much gum per piece? Chewing a full piece of Bubble Yum starts hurting my jaw after a while. I've been in the habit of only chewing a half-a-piece for a while now. Makes the gum last longer, although in the case of Bubble Yum Chocolate, I don't think I'd buy another pack.

Abandoned Blogs Make Baby Jesus Cry

This blog isn't dead it's just sleeping! I swear! Anyway if you came to look at this blog because of my Aaron Sorkin post (Hi Twoppers!) this blog is mostly about me and Weight Watchers but occasionally I posted little anecdotes of amusement. And sometimes I rant about old episodes of Loveline and Adam Corrolla. Yeah this blog makes no sense, I agree. I'm the total "blogger in her pjs with a freezer full of Lean Cuisines and an apartment full of cats." (For the record, the two cats I live with aren't mine and the Lean Cuisines are very, very old because I don't like them.)

I am about to be unemployed again after a lovely five-month interval of being an actual employed "activisty" blogger. I would love to link to my other stuff on here, but I'm not sure I want the world to know that my regular persona has such low self-esteem.