The Bad News Bearers

After a long Christmas break, a 'real news' backlog seems to be emanating from the DC-NY corridor. Here are links to 4 items of genuine import:

1) A Times story that is splashing all over the leftosphere, making prominent appearances on Buzzflash, Raw Story and HuffPo. See It Now. In essence this piece of solid journalism demonstrates that Administration claims of restraint w/r/t their spying on you were, oh, what's the right word...lies.

The whole article is (in your best Boston accent,) 'wicked important' (N.B. the star-spangled byline: L. Bergman, E. Lichtblau and D. Van Natta,) but here's an appetizer, in the form of a surprisingly WaPo-like lede. (Italics ours.)

"In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans."

2) WaPo's Pincus stopping just inches short of admitting that Iraq's low-grade civil war is becoming less 'low-grade civil', more 'war': See It Now.

The moral of this one seems to be, "folks who can't manage a baseball team or get oil out of the west Texas ground shouldn't get involved in thousand-year-old blood feuds they know nothing about." (Use of the word 'folks' should be a clue as to whom we refer.)

3) Jon Alter on a constitutional crisis that nobody seems to care about: See It Now. Standing Eight, despite our Impeach Bush banner, agrees with Alter's anti-impeachment point. (And no, that's not a flip-flop.)

4) While it's true one poll can be wrong, it's less true when twelve polls look exactly the same. See It Now.

If the top three items don't give you fits, then you probably ended up at The Eight by mistake. That's okay. We're still glad you stopped by, and please don't hesitate to call again. If they do give you fits, consider the fourth item dessert.

(Full disclosure/A peek behind the Standing Eight curtain: without Buzz, Raw, and Huff, The Eight would be nothing but a few mediocre poems and barrelfuls of snark. The worst part of being a media critic is that you have to pay so much attention to the media.)

Gout! Gout, Damn Spot!

Has your vice president been withholding the nature of his recent medical problems from you? Columnist Bill Hall of the Tacoma News Tribune thinks so, and it's hi-lar-ious! See It Now.

Standing Eight cannot offer an expert medical opinion, but Mr. Hall's forthright analysis, plus the episode of King of the Hill we saw that touches on the subject, lead us to believe Hall is on the ball.

And doesn't it seem like every medium-sized paper has a columnist named Bill Hall? Could the name be the 'Alan Smithee' of editorial page filler? Do we smell a conspiracy? Are we depleting our monthly question mark budget?

We'll have all the answers tonight on action news at eleven. (No, we won't.)

Shelley Winters - RIP

(Note to regular Eighters: we will be dropping the editorial 'we' in this post because it involves a first person story that happened to 'one of us'. Don't worry, 'we' will be back.)

No link here, but it has hit the wires that Oscar Winner Shelley Winters died, or as you may know her, "Roseanne's Grandmother" from Roseanne. This is indeed sad, but I'm sure she lived a good life and takes many good memories with her.

One memory she probably won't take with her, because it wouldn't have been important to her, was when she semi-intentionally shoved me and was then quite rude about it, implying that I had spilled her drink, during the intermission of a Broadway play. This was Kander and Ebb's disastrous 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' some ten or more years ago, (which I only saw because a friend of the family was in the cast,) and as I said, she shoved me out of her way quite brusquely to move back toward her seat, spilled something pungent in the process, and then muttered what I am sure was an F-bomb and glared at me expecting apology. I had been standing still (and she outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds,) so apology was not forthcoming, but really there were no hard feelings on my end. After all, how many people ever get shoved by Oscar Winners at Broadway plays? It was to date one of my top five brushes with greatness, (although I can't say I've ever really been a fan of hers.)

Please note that relating this anecdote is in no way intended as a slam. It's really a good memory of mine, and Standing Eight notes her passing with a mild, celebrity-death sadness.

Judging Sadd-amy

This cannot be good. The judge from Saddam's trial (The one we see on screen, there are four others,) has resigned. See It Now.

Some choice words from the BBC bulletin on the subject:

"Some members of the Iraqi government and US politicians have complained that Judge Rizgar has been too soft on the former president, allowing him to take over the court.

However, the source within the tribunal told the BBC's Alistair Leithead in Baghdad that Judge Rizgar is not resigning over pressure from the Iraqi government, but because of his disappointment at the public's reaction.

The source said that the judge had simply been trying to ensure that the trial is fair and that everyone involved gets their say."

Frankly, we kind of liked him (Rizgar, not Saddam.) The main serious criticism of him, viz. that he gave Saddam a soapbox and treated him too deferentially, may have a grain of truth, but let's face it, Saddam was going to be found guilty and killed. If you're going to have a show-trial, why not make it a show-fair-trial?

It probably won't ever come out, but we would officially not be surprised if another reason he is resigning has to do with "The Americans" having too much influence over the trial. Which crimes to put Saddam up for, how to do it so as to seem just fair enough to keep the outrage from boiling over and having the UN demand a change of venue without being so fair that God forbid Saddam doesn't get the axe, etc.

Discussion question: Would it really be the worst thing in the world if Saddam spends the rest of his natural life in US custody? (I.e. without getting the death penalty?)

That's Rich!

We were pleased to see that Frank Rich agreed with us about the relative surprise level of the NSA leak, i.e. that it really wasn't terribly surprising to learn that this administration exceeded the law in its information gathering, given everything else we knew about them at that point. (Enemy combatants' access to due process and fast-and-loose torture rules, to name but two.)

See It Now (Standing Eight)
See It Now (Frank Rich)

Here's a key graf from the latest Rich piece:

"That motive is not, as many liberals would have it, a simple ideological crusade to gut the Bill of Rights. Real conservatives, after all, are opposed to Big Brother; even the staunch Bush ally Grover Norquist has criticized the N.S.A.'s overreaching. The highest priority for the Karl Rove-driven presidency is instead to preserve its own power at all costs. With this gang, political victory and the propaganda needed to secure it always trump principles, even conservative principles, let alone the truth.
Whenever the White House most vociferously attacks the press, you can be sure its No. 1 motive is to deflect attention from embarrassing revelations about its incompetence and failures."

Remember the good old days when Frank was a theater critic and one bad review from him could shut your whole show down? Wouldn't it be great if he could wield that kind of clout writing about Washington's reality-drama (which on Fox would be called "The D.C.")?

Ah, but how would you feel about him "if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

Explain the above title.

So you'll probably recall the mild battle that ended in mid-December between McCain, (anti-torture sensible party) and the Bush Admin, notably Cheney (pro-torture silly party.) And you'll probably remember that the media gave McCain a win once the "McCain Torture Amendment" was signed into law by Bush. But you may have missed the fact that after signing the law with much fanfare, Bush then signed another document claiming he could basically ignore said law at his own imperial whim. They're called 'signing statements' and they've become very popular with this president. Of course there was little (actually no,) fanfare about this last bit, Bush wants you to think he's against torture. Just one more shiny new tool in his propaganda shed. What can we do but note it here with a sad sigh (sigh.)

Here is a short but sweet statement from McCain regarding the signing statement. It is to be hoped that he will pick this fight up again and, as he promised in December, not rest until this is resolved. Having gotten his amendment through, he needs to fight to see it enforced. Half Measures Avail Us Nothing. See It Now.

Here's the text of the statement, since McCain's website has a suspicious tendency to have technical problems when you try to read it (as in, "technically Bush hates McCain, and would like to see him (legally,) tortured. Again."):

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, Jan 04, 2006

"We believe the President understands Congress's intent in passing by very large majorities legislation governing the treatment of detainees included in the 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations and Authorization bills. The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation. Our Committee intends through strict oversight to monitor the Administration's implementation of the new law."

Support The Troops. Buy Some Armor.

From the NY Times (Suggested new motto: 'All the news that's fit to print a year too late')

"A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor." See It Now.

And if you don't believe the liberal media, here's a PDF of the 'secret Pentagon study': See It Now.

Yellow ribbons only go so far.

NBC: Nothin' But Christ

It seems as though a few NBC affiliates from where else but the Bible Belt will be boycotting the new 'Book of Daniel' show. (See It Now.) This should come as a surprise to exactly no one, but let's just have a little legal flashback:

Who remembers the last network show to be boycotted by affiliates? We remember it being 'NYPD Blue' in its premiere season. And how did that work out for all involved? Try 82 Emmy nominations, 19 awards, central character and star (Sipowicz/Franz,) become inarguable first-ballot TV hall of famers, Bocchco rises from very successful to legendary, Caruso regrets leaving early.

And for the affiliates? We know BeloCorp's WFAA in DFW participated in the boycott for a while, but a UHF station in Dallas gladly took the orphan drama and got its best ratings ever, which eventually made WFAA jealous and cash-minded enough to flip-flop and carry the show. Other affiliates did as well. We have no way of knowing if 'Daniel' will approach 'Blue's level of quality, from the previews we'd suspect not, (TV quality is nearly an oxymoron anyway,) but we do know that corporations, which are in the business of making money, not moralising, almost always regret bowing to this kind of pressure from America's enduring puritan subculture (and it is a sub-culture.)

Also, from our extensive knowledge of the history of Monty Python, we can concur in Graham Chapman's judgment, (re: 'Life Of Brian') that only sad morons protest an entertainment they have never seen. For all we know 'Book of Daniel' could be the next Joan of Arcadia/Touched by an Angel/Highway to Heaven. Granted it doesn't look like peaceful pablum for Pat Robertson's pew-fillers, but that's just the point, we don't know yet. Anyone claiming to know is lying, and we seem to recall that Jesus frowned on lying. We would 'call hypocrisy' on the protesters, but that's a four syllable word, so they don't know what it means.

And we do fall back on a salient theological point we've been trying to make for the past 10 years: If Jesus were around today, he'd want nothing to do with Pat Robertson and the people who hold up signs saying 'God hates fags'. Jesus didn't hang with those types back in his day, nor would he now. He'd be out at the bars at night, befriending hookers and the homeless, and yes, doubt-plagued ministers with gay drug-dealing kids.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Bush's Boo Boo

To invert Stephen Colbert's trademark question: George W. Bush: Tasteless President, or Tactless President?

Okay, quickly: Bush was visiting some wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center, which is admirable, and surprising, for him. Then, to show off his admirablity, he took some questions from reporters. Before dodging all the toughies about spying, Abramoff etc., he spoke to the valor of the soldiers he'd just visited. He's "just overwhelmed" by their strength of character. Great, so are we. We'd have tried to say it a little better, but we're liberal academic elitists. Then he goes way, way off the reservation (italics, as always, ours:)

"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel."

Two comments, one long and one short:

1) Had he made this joke at his ranch or even in the White House press room, it would just be another silly Bush fumble. But he didn't. He said this at the hospital among men and maybe women who lost limbs and eyes fighting his stupid-ass trumped-up bring-it-on war-of-choice. It is so far beyond tasteless that the word may not have been invented yet to capture it (we'd nominate our coinage, "bushesque".) It undercut everything he meant to do with the photo-op and utterly dissed every man and woman who ever has, does, or will wear the uniform.

Standing Eight is a known detractor of the man, but we have rarely, no in fact we have never, been so galled by his idiocy. All those who doubted that you can support the troops without supporting the president, Bush just proved you wrong. He trashed the troops worse than any anti-war protester ever could. When a hippie calls you a 'baby-killer' it shows that they appreciate the monumental scale and importance of your job, and also happen to disagree with you. When Bush equates his klutziness with Corporal Umpdefratz's limb-sacrificing heroism, it shows that he does not understand or respect the military he Chiefly Commands any more than he understood or respected the Texas Rangers or the Oil Biz he Chiefly Executive Officered

But it's worse than that, because nobody respects the Texas Rangers. We should all respect the troops, but surely that respect is learned from the top down. Right now we've got some pretty bad teachers at the top. Remember the "purple-heart" band-aids that popped up at the Republican convention last year as a slimy slur against Kerry's service? Eventually cooler heads made enough of a ruckus about that, and Bush and the convention officials ran away from the display, saying the band-aids had sprung up grassroots-style (as if anything unscripted happens at a convention.) His tacky joke at Brooke was worse. A resounding boo to you and your boo boo, Mr. President. (Notice that we can still respect the office? It's not hard.)

That was several comments, and quite long, and we may regret the prose in the morning, but we are steaming mad. Here is comment number...

2) Dollars to donuts (we're gonna get fat winning all these donuts,) that it wasn't a cedar injury, and that was a cover story for him having another boil lanced or a bump of some kind biopsied. (Actually we'll never get those donuts, since they'll never admit it, but the way he said the cedar line was awkward and liar-ish, and the shape of his cut was suspicious.) Laugh at us if you will. We're confident in this one. And of course if we're right, we do not wish the man any ill, we hope whatever was removed was benign and that he'll live another 50 years. As a disgraced impeached resigned former president.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

We did, for a few hours. At 8ish west coast time we saw this: See It Now, an AP article claiming that the miners had been found alive. We were a little suspicious that the only source was family members, and not the mining company, but like good Americans we were able to largely ignore those suspicions and be happy for the rejoicing families. 'Miracle' for once did not seem a semantic stretch.

Only to come back to the computer a few hours later and see this: See It Now. An AP article with the lede, "Jubilant family members celebrated news early Wednesday that 12 miners were pulled alive from the scene of an underground explosion, only to learn nearly three hours later that they had been misled and just one miner actually survived." (Italics ours.)

At exactly 1:24am west coast time, Huffington Post actually has links to both articles up. A devastating day for those involved, and not exactly a banner day for journalism. (The journalistic angle being the only reason we discuss it in these pages. Standing Eight would prefer to let all bereaved persons, in all cases, grieve in private.)

This is one of the times when the overused word tragedy is called for, not only because of the deaths (which would be enough,) but the family's day of being jerked around is (to we outside observers,) equally heartbreaking.

It's already been widely reported that this mine had a couple hundred safety complaints in 2005.

We can say nothing to console those dealing with this loss, and don't expect them to wander by The Eight, but for persons who do, and since media criticism is our stock in trade and the media are complicit in today's awfulness, here are two sentences pulled from the later story and one comment-question about each sentence:

1) (After the families were told the truth:) "At that point, chaos broke out in the church and a fight started." Comment: Who was fighting, AP? Family against family? Family against mine representative? Reporter against greedy reporter?

2) (This quote referring to the earlier moments after the families had been told they were alive:) "A few minutes after word came, the throng, several hundred strong, broke into a chorus of the hymn "How Great Thou Art," in a chilly, night air." Comment: Is he still great?

---LATE UPDATE--- This is clearly going to prove to be the big story of the day, probably the next few days and into next week. All the big papers print editions got caught and went with "Miners Found Alive" on their front pages (NY Times, NY Post, Newsday...) which they'll have to retract and cover tomorrow, Thursday. plus Imus won't shut up about it, and Imus is the starting gun for the daily news cycle echo-chamber.---

News of Today, Written in 1944

From a letter to H.J. Willmett, dated 18 May 1944, from who else but Standing Eight's Patron Saint, George Orwell (all italics ours, some line breaks ours for ease of onscreen reading):

...You ask whether totalitarianism, leader worship, etc., are really on the up-grade and instance the fact that they are not apparently growing in this country and the USA.

I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuehrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuehrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralized economies which can be made to 'work' in an economic sense but which are not democratically organized and which tend to establish a caste system.

With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuehrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, i.e. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can't say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics, they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuehrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the U.S.A. Whatever the pacifists, etc., may say, we have not gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book 'The Lion and the Unicorn', in the English people and in their capacity to centralize the economy without destroying freedom in doing so. But one must remember that Britain and the U.S.A. haven't been really tried, they haven't known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones.

To begin with, there is the general indifference to the decay of democracy... Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsifications of our history, etc., so long as they feel that it is on 'our' side. Indeed the statement that we haven't a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuehrer elsewhere. One can't be sure that that won't change, nor can one be sure that the common people won't think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I hope they won't, I even trust they won't, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesn't point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.

You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils - I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the U.S.S.R. against Germany because I think the U.S.S.R. cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think and have thought, ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.

Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell

Step 1: Place Head (A) in Sand (A).

Step 2: Ignore these two items. They don't mean that the noble republic you learned about in 8th grade civics class is crashing down around you.

News you won't read in American media: See It Now

Informed opinion Americans don't want to hear: See It Now

(Orwell alert: the author of this op-ed, a well-intentioned CEO of a San Jose semiconductor company, thinks Orwell's vision of 1984 is only now coming to pass, but you should know better. Orwell wrote about the world he saw around him in '48. It is not prophecy, it's reportage. What is happening now is that Orwell's truth is becoming easier to see, due to a certain brazenness streak emanating from the current administration. "Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called walking." Some people laughed when they heard Bush say that, others got unpleasant chills.)

For further edification on the reality and truth Orwell saw, we would suggest re-reading 1984 if the last time you read it was pre 9/11, or a much shorter assignment hitting some of the high points can be found here.

Of What Does a Brits List Consist? This.

The internets were awash in year-end lists, and you'll notice, we hope thankfully, that The Eight posted exactly zero of them, until now. From the BBC (aka the guys Monty Python were always making fun of,) '100 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Year.' See It Now. (Keep in mind that they're Brits, their 'billions' are different than ours, and they're more interested in things British than are we.)

For those of you too lazy or disinterested to hit the link, here are 7 good ones:

45. C3PO and R2D2 do not speak to each other off-camera because the actors don't get on.

59. Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where its title is translated as Foggy City Orphan.

68. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.

71. Jimi Hendrix pretended to be gay to be discharged from the US Army.

92. You are 176 times more likely to be murdered than to win the National Lottery.

99. The Japanese word "chokuegambo" describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.

100. Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".