Let Sleeping Watchdogs Lie

Last week I criticised the media for giving a free ride to Dubya in the lead-up to his inaugural. This week gave me some cause for hope; Snark in a couple of newsposts. Are the media's watchdogs, somnolent since 9/11/2001, finally starting to stir?

First I noticed this attempt to put Bush's profligate spending in perspective:
At nearly $105 billion, total funding for military operations in 2005 would be more than 13 times larger than Bush's budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is charged with keeping the nation's air, water and land pollution-free, and would be nearly as big as the state of California's annual budget.

Bonus points for an analogy that makes the concept of "billions" very clear.

Next up, Art Spiegelman interviews Gore Vidal (America's two crotchety-est men, together at last!), who has this to say:
"I can't believe the speed with which the entire republic fell apart. The U.S. Bill of Rights fell apart with Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act,"

"Preventive war became our national policy, which has not been any nation's policy since Hitler. A preventive war is about as un-American as you get. But that doesn't mean we haven't done it before; The worst (previous)* example was the Mexican War. That brave moralist, Ulysses S. Grant, who had been a second lieutenant just out of West Point, hated that war and said ... that nations like individuals suffer for their transgressions."

"I believe the Civil War was the judgment of God on us for what we did to Mexico. God knows what we are going to get for Iraq."

*Note the inclusion of "previous" by the editors, just to clarify that the title of "worst example" is still up for grabs.

Lastly, Bush decided this week to send Dick Cheney as America's representative at the Auschwitz commemoration, when all the other important (and not-so-important, e.g. Adrienne Clarkson) heads of state were attending. (No doubt George needed a vacation to rest his arm after all that hard work signing spending bills.) The press secretary must have gone with him, though, as the official response (page 2) as to why Bush declined to attend was elicited from a "senior administration official" who sounds like he majored in business rather than history or, say, social work:
In Washington, a senior administration official was asked Tuesday about Bush's decision not to attend and replied that the president "sent one of his closest confidants to attend that very important ceremony." The official added: "He's been to Poland. He was just there last year."

I love the childish "need it, need it, got it, need it" undercurrent there - so evocative of Bush's foreign policy and knowledge of world affairs. Also love the irony of the de facto head of the US present amidst the real movers and shakers (and Adrienne Clarkson.)

Of course, all my newfound hopes with the media were dashed when I realised that the first story came from Reuters (an English agency), and the highpoint in the article was so far down the pyramid few American papers will publish to that point. The second story will never be read by anyone outside of blue-states (a Jew interviewing a gay? Gore Vidal? Probably won't be read by most of the people inside the blue-states either!) The third was from the International Herald Tribune.

Three and a half years and two wars later, the mainstream American press is still MIA.

Abecederial Axis Evil Of

This movie review from the NYTimes doesn't make me want to see the feature, but now I'm desperate to see the short that precedes it:

The short film 'Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet,' whose curious title is explained by the film's premise. The artist and documentary maker Lenka Clayton took President Bush's 2002 State of the Union address (the 'axis of evil' speech), chopped it into its constituent 4,100 words, and arranged the results in alphabetical order. The project is so simple as to constitute a prank, but a result is a bracing piece of avant-garde agitprop that provides an X-ray of American political oratory in the wake of 9/11. The film is by turns sobering and funny, as unexpected fragments of syntax emerge from the onslaught of words: 'Always, always, always, always, America,' the president seems to chant, before engaging in an accidental exhortation: 'Let's, liberate, liberty.'"

I'm Gonna Need More Cats

Depressing realisation that perenial-batty-middle-aged-actress Edie McClurg was only five years older than I am now when she filmed Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Suddenly, I feel very old. Also very matronly, and far less employable than Edie...

*sigh*

The Right to Die is Dead to Rights

Gov. Bush Loses Appeal in Fla. Right-To-Die Case:

"The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a setback on Monday to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's efforts to intervene to keep a severely brain-damaged woman on life support despite the wishes of her husband."

The Bush family continues its war against humanity. Here's a thought for the dying woman's husband - have her commit a felony. That seems to be the key to achieving a 180 in Jeb Bush's opinions...

Word of the Moment: Privilege

On a related note, here's a word with a kickass etymology:

Privilege, n.

1. A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste.
2. Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin prvilgium, a law affecting one person : prvus, single, alone]"

A Privilege, Not A Right

One of today's NYTimes editorials decries "The Crafty Attacks on Evolution" currently happening in US school boards (red and blue alike, surprisingly):

"In the Pennsylvania case, the school board went further and became the first in the nation to require, albeit somewhat circuitously, that attention be paid in school to 'intelligent design.' This is the notion that some things in nature, such as the workings of the cell and intricate organs like the eye, are so complex that they could not have developed gradually through the force of Darwinian natural selection acting on genetic variations. Instead, it is argued, they must have been designed by some sort of higher intelligence."

Personally, I don't believe school boards that adopt such policies should be allowed to have science departments at all. It boggles the mind. Or, rather, it boggles the minds of those who have actually been taught to think and to question, which is obviously not the case of the Creationist parent lobbyists at play here.

The irony of the situation is that, within a few years, the students of these school systems will find themselves increasingly ill-prepared for higher education, and I would venture to guess that most respectable institutions will be earmarking applications made by such students for rejection. Educational Darwinism, at least, will show itself to be a fact, rather than theory.