Media critique.

Johnathan Foreman in the Weekly Standard on why the reportage from Baghdad has been so grotesquely inaccurate:

Perhaps this is just another case of reporters with an anti-American or antiwar agenda. Perhaps living in Saddam's totalitarian Baghdad has left some of the press here with a case of Stockholm syndrome. It may also be a byproduct of depending on interpreters and fixers who were connected to or worked with the approval of the Saddam regime. And you cannot underestimate the herd instinct that can take over when you have a lot of media folk in a confined area for any length of time. But whatever the cause, the result has been very selective reporting.

Why, tell us more, Johnathan.

The Associated Press's Hamza Hendawi, for instance, massively exaggerated and misrepresented the nature of the looting in Baghdad in the first days after the U.S. armored forces took key points in the city. Like so many Baghdad-based reporters, she described an "unchecked frenzy" that did not exist at that time (the looting was targeted and nonviolent, in the sense that the looters attacked neither persons nor inhabited dwellings). Read her pieces and you'll meet a veritable parade of Iraqis who are angry with the United States.

Then there were those exaggerated reports of April 18 claiming (as Reuters' Hassan Hafidh put it) that "Tens of thousands of protesters demanded on Friday that the United States get out of Iraq. . . . In the biggest protest since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, 24-year-long rule nine days ago, Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established." Demonstrators did come out of one mosque, but reporters seem to have confused them with the large numbers of Shia Muslims gathering for the pilgrimage to Karbala--a pilgrimage long forbidden by the Saddam regime.

Reporters who don't have any idea what they're looking at? I'm shocked. Shocked.

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed--in particular the hospitals and the national museum--while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so-called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro-regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.

I have a feeling I'm going to be pointing people to this article again and again. When I think about how readily the idea that the US guarded the oil ministry over the museum was swallowed by people who should have known better, it just pisses me off afresh. Not that my opinion of the press in general needed any lowering. (Link via Tainted Bill McCabe, who got it from Glenn Reynolds.)

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard.

Sheila A-stray at Redheaded Ramblings has posted one of the funniest, shrieking-with-laughter-so-loud-the-neighbors-think-I'm-being-murdered, tears-streaming-from-the-eyes things I've ever read. Not the collected slam reviews of Battlefield Earth I originally went to her blog to read (link via Dean Esmay), though those are hilarious, but the post about her acting experiences in truly horrendous plays. (Since it's Blogspot the links are fucked up. It's the 5/3 entry entitled "Battlefield Recap".) She's going on the blogroll.

Neo-barbarians at the gates.

This is what the Australian universities are wasting their money on.

Last week, The Australian newspaper's brow-creasing Higher Education liftout carried a perfectly serious front-page story with a picture of a London artist wearing a corset over his face.

It reported, without a whinny of amazement, that Sydney's Macquarie University was hosting an international conference of academics, plus artists like this face-flattened Brit, to discuss "Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves".

The conference organiser, Queer Studies lecturer Nikki Sullivan, explained that they would for three days discuss how we pierce, tattoo, brand, stretch, suction and slash our bodies, and how bad people are to judge us for doing so.

She raised the example of people volunteering to have a leg or arm amputated, simply because they do "not feel at ease with it, or would prefer the look or feel of a radically altered body".

It was wrong to dismiss such people, proudly hacking off their healthy limbs, as mentally ill. This was, as the paper put it, actually a "legitimate phenomenon".

"What is self-mutilation and what is body art -- that line is very unclear," said Sullivan, a mother with five tattoos and piercings in her nose and ears.

No, it isn't.

[snip]

Don't think Sullivan is on a frolic of her own deep in the flatulent bowels of Macquarie's Department of Critical and Cultural Studies. Let me demonstrate by giving you the titles of some of the other papers delivered at her conference, which is sponsored by the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia.

The show kicked off with "A Straight Boy's Experiences of Getting a Prince Albert Piercing (of his penis)", and not surprisingly moved on to "The Phallus as Freak-Show", followed by "White Trash Get Down on Your Knees, It's Time for Cake and Sodomy". An Indian academic then talked of this "Elective Amputation", before things perked up with "Performing Muscular Drag in Circus".

Then came "How to Murder Barbie, F... Mommy and Live Forever", and "Am I 'Becoming-Rat' or Losing My Ear?", Before the fun ended with "What an A..e Can Do", "He F...ed Me on National TV" and "I Make Myself in Hurting Myself".

Sullivan herself spoke on "Queer Ethics: On (Not) Reading the Face of Michael Jackson". And the keynote speaker was Del La Grace Volcano, a "queer, lesbian photographer" who became a "Gender Terrorist, an Intentional Mutation and Intersex by Design" -- a "he" who "subverts . . . the notion that only two genders exist, male and female".

And to think I giggled at the "Self and Other" PoMo conference they had at U of L when I was there as an undergrad in the early 80s. If they'd had a freak show like this I'd be obligated to torch my diploma as a worthless piece of garbage.

Queer Studies. Judas Priest, that'll get you a job in the real world.

[Via Tim Blair. The 5/02 entry, scroll to the post about Rupert Murdoch.]

Not quite sure what to make of this.

Janeane Garofalo will be starring (and I use that term inadvisedly) in Ash Tuesday, a movie about the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She'll play a woman who works in a health food store and doesn't want to leave her apartment. She does look like someone who would work in a health food store, at least.

Bring me the head of Steve Phillips.

Mike Lupica makes a compelling case for firing Steve Phillips (which frankly should have preceding Valentine's firing) in today's Daily News (with bonus Timeline of Shame^tm!)

Meanwhile, Mo Vaughn (note that I refrained from referring to him as "Moo" this time) teases Mets fans by hinting that he might retire, having suffered the ignominy of having to remove himself from a game after one at bat when he made himself nauseous by taking "supplements" on an empty stomach. The Mets, ladies and gentlemen. Baseball's brain trust.

Bruce Springsteen's America.

This is somewhat old, but it came up recently on one of the Mets groups I'm in (time to talk about anything but the team), and I'd be somewhat remiss if I didn't mention it here. Bruce Springsteen thinks the quashing of the Dixie Chicks' dissent is "unAmerican":

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.

To me, they're silly asses who tried to ingratiate themselves with a foreign audience by trashing the government that protects their right to be silly asses. NPR aside, radio is a business, not a public service. It is not incumbent on country radio to make sure they have a wide spectrum of political views represented on their playlists. (If it were, Steve Earle might get more airplay, the talented pinko commie bastard.)

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom.

What the fuck are you talking about? The pressure is coming from The People, and "big business" in this case is bowing to popular pressure. You think they like taking the Chicks out of rotation and having to look for a replacement? And just once I'd like to see a specific example of governmental pressure cited, rather than this infantile generalized scaremongering about the evil, shadowy Republican administration.

Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

If people don't want to hear the Dixie Chicks, you can't force them. If it's no longer the will of the people to hear your music, sucks to be you. That's what freedom's all about, baby.

I don't know what happens next,

Dogs living with cats...

but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.

Then buy a radio station and program the Chicks 24/7. Or write them a check. But don't tell the market what to do. That's un-American.

Frank J. interviews Condoleeza Rice.

Frank: What do you think of today's military technology?

Rice: I think we have a huge technological advantage over our enemy. I mean they're a bunch of dumb turds with second hand AK-47's, and we have laser guided missiles that can fly through space. And, with our advance accuracy, we can avoid civilian casualties.

Frank: And it is the administration’s position to not kill children?

Rice: Yes, even the stupid smelly ones. That's why we have cruise missiles that can fly miles and miles and then accurately hit a target about the size of Michael Moore.

Frank: So why is Michael Moore still around.

Rice: He runs a lot faster than you'd think.

IMAO. Cutting edge blog journalism.

"From director Rob Zombie."

That's a sentence fragment that should only occur when monkeys are given typewriters.

Jon Stewart re-ups with Comedy Central.

It's the smart move. Laurence Simon at Amish Tech Support lays out the reasons why he'd be an idiot to move to broadcast, which covets him:

Jimmy Kimmel went from Comedy Central's Man Show to that piece of shit he's got on Disney's ABC that stinks up the airwaves after Koppel.
Bill Maher got away with a lot of lefty gaffes when he was on HBO, but Disney wiped him out in spades when he screwed up on Disney's ABC. He's back on HBO, I believe.
Dennis Miller tried to go from an HBO series to Monday Night Football on Disney's ABC, then got bumped for some burned-out fat old guy
Wait... I see a pattern here... hold on... wait... wait for it...

Nope. Lost it. Must have just had Post Disney Traumatic Disorder there or something. Sorry.

In the same post Laurence also notes that Colin Quinn may have found his niche on Politically Incorrect. Haven't seen it, but the commercials do make it look interesting.

Update: The spelling of Mr. Stewart's first name corrected at Emily's behest.

I am the consumer of worlds. Fear me.

As I have noted in comments elsewhere, humanity would require 9.6 planets if everybody lived like I do. Not that the quiz is biased, or anything. *cough*

DChix redux.

Drudge follows up the Dixie Chicks tempest in a teapot by excerpting bits of an interview they've done with Diane Sawyer that hasn't aired yet. [Link via Tainted Bill McCabe.] I don't have much in the way of commentary, except to note that they use the word "compassion" the way the Smurfs used "smurf" and its derivatives, and then there's this bit:

MAINES: …I ask questions. That's smart. That's intelligent. To find out facts not to just, 'Okay, we're going over here now.' I say, 'Why are we going over there?' And I don't mean to Iraq, I mean across the room. Since I was tiny, you've had to tell me why I have to do something…

Asking stupid questions isn't particularly smart, and certainly not when the answers to your questions have been spelled out, in detail, ad nauseam, for the prior several months. If you didn't know why we were going, it's not through any failure on the part of the president or his cabinet to spell it out for you so much as your failure to listen.

Cruel and funny.

My favorite combination. Via the essential Jim Treacher*, Fametracker's Ten Least Essential Summer Films. Note that I link to this list despite the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean comes in at number 6, higher than Bad Boys II (though I am not clear on whether that position means it's more or less likely to suck), and I am currently in serious denial about its potential hideosity because I really, really want to see a good pirate movie like Against All Flags, though I secretly suspect this may not be it. The involvement of Jerry Bruckheimer can't be a good thing.

*Judas Priest, is Blogspot ever going to fix the damn archive problem? First entry on 4/23/03.

Mickey Kaus on the museum looting.

Via David Nieporent's Jumping to Conclusions, though this passage wasn't his primary focus:

P.S.: I don't see why it gets the U.S. off the hook if the looting was an "inside job." You can protect against inside jobs too, by preventing things from leaving the building -- like priceless statues that take ten men to lift. The issue isn't who did the stealing, but whether or not we screwed up and failed to do what we could. To the extent that our forces were taking fire from the museum and unable to safely protect it, we obviously didn't screw up. To the extent our forces didn't even know for several days that there was a museum there to protect (but did know there was a bank), or to the extent they decided to protect water storage facilities and other infrastructure rather than art work, it was a screw-up. Islamic terrorists twenty years from now won't be wooing recruits with the story of how the evil Americans smashed a water storage facility. They will be telling them about how the Americans burned ancient copies of the Koran and destroyed the heritage of the Arab world. ...

They'll be lying, then, because it wasn't the Americans looting the museum, it was fellow Iraqis. I can't say it often enough: I do not give a shit about this because they robbed themselves, and if they were that concerned about preserving their cultural heritage, they could have done something about it themselves. Museums are not the US military's primary concern, nor should they be; those institutions that were protected by the military--yes, including the fucking oil ministry--are far more necessary to post-war efforts to rebuild the country's economic and political structure than the damn museum. The people who survived this war to bitch about the loss of their artifacts twenty years hence should count themselves lucky to be able to do so.

Gents, doff your caps.

Nina Simone has died in France at the age of 70. [Via Drudge.]

Feet to the fire.

Steve H. at Little Tiny Lies follows up on the pre-war utterances of several anti-war celebrities. Behold a sample of the carnage:

Hmm…George Clooney. Let me begin by saying, “Solaris.” Saying Solaris to George Clooney is like running into an MSNBC board meeting and yelling “Donahue.” With that irrelevant yet satisfying insult behind me, let me remind everyone that George Clooney said we couldn’t beat the Iraqis. “We can’t beat anyone,” said Furious George. No word from The Man in the Big Yellow Hat.

Maybe he was right. Maybe Saddam let us capture ten thousand soldiers and occupy all of his major cities as part of a master plan we’re just too dim to appreciate. Or maybe it was performance art. Or sarcasm. A huge practical joke…sort of like…conning a movie studio to give you millions of dollars to make a movie about the host of The Gong Show! We’re still waiting for the punchline on that one, George. I have a great title for the next movie you direct: O Audience, Where Art Thou? How about Attendance: Eleven?

George never did explain his reasoning. Our last two visits to Iraq were so easy, Bush considered training for this one by scheduling war games against the Girl Scouts. But Furious George thought it was only a matter of days before the Republican Guard occupied Bel Air, put all the chippies in burqas and confiscated his gigantic stockpile of exotic condoms and acyclovir. Relax, George. Thanks to Tommy Franks, you can get back to your life’s work.

That's just good stuff.

Vin Diesel.

Best single-sentence review of "A Man Apart": Even the fisticuffs make no sense.

Sauce for the goose.

Tim Robbins on Tuesday:

"Any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence to intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation."

[Link via Midwest Conservative Journal.]

Tim Robbins to a reporter at the Oscars:

"If you ever write about my family again, I will (expletive) find you and I will (expletive) hurt you."

Freedom of the Press is apparently secondary to Tim's Freedom to Run His Yap Without Consequence.

Jamie Kennedy

I'd rate him about a 95 on the Tom Green scale of Unfunny.

(Getting really tired of the trailers for Malibu's Most Wanted.)

Boycott of French goods is having an effect.

According to this article in the Washington Post, the French are starting to feel the sting of the American backlash against French goods, at least in certain areas, notably wine imports.

American importers of French wine are reporting sharp drops in sales in the past two months, and other French products also have been affected. The Federation of Wine Exporters has called a meeting Thursday to discuss how to respond.

The nation's principal business federation took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging the problem, conceding today that sales, recruitment and business contacts have been hurt. It appealed to consumers and businesses to keep political differences from affecting commerce.

"Certain French enterprises are suffering today from the differences that have arisen among states over the Iraqi question," the Movement of French Enterprises (Medef) said. "It is necessary to say to those who are unhappy with the positions of French diplomacy that they are free to criticize, but they must keep products and services of our enterprises outside their quarrel."

Maybe that's a bad translation, but it sounds suspiciously like Medef thinks the US public is in some way obligated to keep French business interests above the political fray. Sorry, boys, that's not the way things work over here. Skipping to the end:

The importers, angry and frustrated, said the government in Paris did not comprehend the effect of its war position on French businesses.

Touton [wine importer] has tried to fight the trend by pledging to give $1 for every case of wine he sells to the USO to help U.S. troops in Iraq. He has done it for two weeks but it hasn't helped much. He said he thinks that business will pick up only when Chirac stops making anti-U.S. statements.

"We want to send the message to the French side to please do something. Or, if you don't want to do anything, then please shut up," Touton said.

Sensible message. If only it had been delivered earlier.

[Link via Dean Esmay.]

Solely of interest to Mets fans.

An overview of the next few months of posting on alt.sports.baseball.ny-mets. It's funny, in that painful Metsochistic way.