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Carly's Conundrum Nov. 2004 Wound-Licking |
Nov. 18, 2005
For a good six to eight years of my life, the terms "Anthony Weatherspoon" and "big" were totally synonymous in my head. Not only was Anthony a big guy to look up to in the literal sense, he was a big guy to look up to in the figurative sense as well. My first encounter with Anthony came on the playing fields at the old Starbuck Jr. High School [now Whittier Christian H.S.]. It was during the summer "ten inch" league, a co-ed version of baseball in which players used a ball that was 10 inches in circumference -- hence the name. The ball offered an unsatisfying compromise between the hard and unhittable baseball and the light and unmovable softball, permitting a mixture of genders, ages and skill levels both at the plate and out in the field. I had just finished fifth grade and my last fun season of Little League baseball. Anthony, on the other hand, had just completed junior high. While he didn't yet have the bulk he would later add in high school, he certainly had the height, and I remember him stepping up to the plate, taking a left handed stance and hitting the ball an easy 250 feet on the first pitch. The league allowed four outfielders, so, for the rest of the summer reason, we made a point to put at least three in right field whenever Anthony came to the plate. This, of course, left gaps in center and left which Anthony could have exploited if he'd wanted to. Instead, he would simply take our strategic repositioning as a challenge. Four times a game he would step up to the plate, laugh, tilt up his hat to get full view of the fence lying 300 feet distant and swing on the first pitch, eager to see if he could put the ball over our deepest fielder's head. I don't remember if we ever got him out. Sometimes the hits would go so high in the air that the fourth grader we'd stationed in right field would simply cower, waiting for the ball to come crashing back down and to play it on the second bounce. Once the player got a glove on the ball, it became like a bucket brigade. As Anthony circled second, the deep outfielder would hit the first cutoff girl, who would then hit the second cut off boy, who would then heave the ball with all his might in a vain attempt to reach home plate. By this time, of course, Anthony was already back behind the backstop, accepting high fives from his laughing teammates. That was the first time. The second time I encountered Anthony was when I was in eighth grade. Starbuck had closed, forcing me to go to a newly renamed Rancho-Starbuck on the edge of town. Coach Rau, then the head coach at La Habra, brought Anthony and a few other beefy members of the varsity football team over for a weightlifting demonstration. The intent was to instill a little awe in the next crop of freshmen football recruits. I'm not sure if it worked on them, but it worked on me. All I remember is watching Anthony bench press something in the range of 280 or 300 lbs. and feeling thankful that my chosen sport for high school was cross country. The third time I encountered Anthony was the weekend before high school. It was the first football game of the season against Warren and I was sheepishly weaving my way through the crowd, fearful that my not-yet-a-freshman status was already marking me for harrassment. La Habra had a massive team that year, a big reason for their later run at the C.I.F. championship, but Anthony stood out as the go-to guy. I forget whether it was Anthony or his brother Chuck who took the opening kickoff back for a touchdown (the play got called back on a penalty, alas), but I definitely remember the 50 yard run off-tackle Anthony made two plays later to make up for the six lost points. That game pretty much set the tone for my freshman year. High school was the big time and for a guy like me, the smartest thing I could do was keep quiet and keep out of the way until my own size put me in the big kid ranks as well. The closest encounter I had with Anthony came in the winter of that freshman year. When cross country ended, I went out for wrestling. Although small, I had an advantage in the fact that few other wrestlers could make the 98 lbs. weight limit, thus insuring me an occasional shot at varsity time. It was during these matches that I would be lined up in comical juxtaposition with Anthony, our 245 lbs. heavyweight during team warmups, photos and other formal moments. Although we sat at opposite ends of the bench and wrestled at opposite ends of the match, it was a cool freshman ego-boost to hear the biggest stud in the school cheering me on, even as I was struggling to keep my shoulders off the mat. Maybe it was this brief overlap on the varsity that explains why Anthony, a guy who didn't need to waste too many neurons on the name of a scrawny little freshman, greeted me by name when our paths crossed on the way to and from the track. He was heading out for sprint practice. I was heading back to the locker room for some reason. Whatever the justification, the moment is etched into my memory whereas other memories -- graduation, prom, the PSAT -- are a vague jumble of interiors and exteriors. By that point, Anthony was already committed to playing for Colorado, and it wasn't much later that the only time I saw him was on television. When such moments did arrive, I was a bit bummed to see that he'd been forced to trade in his No. 34, inspired by his own childhood hero, Hershel Walker, for a tougher, more fullback-worthy 44. I was also a bit bummed to see him sharing carries with another two running backs in Colorado's boring-as-dirt wishbone offense. At the same time, however, I was becoming a bit more aware, with each passing year, that the life of a stud athlete, especially a stud football athelete isn't everything they make it out to be in the pages of Sports Illustrated. My disappointment peaked in the latter half of Anthony's collegiate career. After the 1985 Freedom Bowl appearance in Anaheim stadium, the Colorado program became a magnet for media attention, most of it negative. Rumors of wild, unwise behavior floated in at a time when rumors were all a person needed to hear. I won't go into all the details that magnified the disappointment, but I've since replaced that disappointment with an adult level of understanding. After all, I wasn't the one taking hits each day in practice and even bigger hits each Saturday on the football field. I also wasn't the one living miles from home, working for free to build a program that would quietly flush me out a few years later. I was the one who just wanted to watch from the stands or from a seat in the local bar and say, proudly, "I wrestled with that guy" as if it were a really true and as if the accomplishments on the field mattered only in so much as they related to me. Anyway, my encounters with Anthony have been absolute zero since the last day I saw him on TV. When I heard he passed away, I Googled his name and followed a link to the Colorado athletics website. I was pleased to see that, at least in death, the department had granted him a measure of respect. I was also pleased to see the tributes from former teammates and coaches. It's hard to believe that a man who was big and strong as Anthony was could be dead barely 20 years after his high school graduation, but according to the website, Anthony found a positive way to approach his painful, year-long demise. "God's blessed me with [MDS], so there must be a reason for me having it," he told one friend. "You can't waste time worrying about why; maybe that's because you mature when you have a family and kids, and that's how I see things." Such comments render playground memories a little feeble, I know, but I'm glad to see that, despite the distorted perspective of youth and the sepia tones of middle age, the image of a kid so big that it seemed like his talents couldn't be contained within a single sport, game or playing field, remains consistent with the image of a guy who found a chance to be big at the end of life as well. If there is an afterlife laid out for us, my sincere hope is that my former ten-inch adversary and (brief) wrestling teammate has a chance to be big there as well. Rest in peace, No. 34. [July 1, 2005] A political rant from the summer of 2005... I'm one of those lily-livered Democrats who refused to speak out back in 2003 before the Iraq invasion. While I sympathized with the demonstrators in not trusting the Bush Administration's motives for a single minute, I also view the governments of the Muslim world with uniform disgust. One brutal dictatorship down, 22 to go, I figured. Saddam's got next. As a result, I kept my mouth shut and felt envious for those whose view of the world accomodates more grayscale than mine Anyway, we all know the story since then: Brilliant campaign. Shitty follow through. An army of volunteers sweating its balls (and labia) off while the rest of us go back to watching "Dancing with the Stars." Clinton redux, in other words, only without the rampant prosperity. That said, I think I drank the kool-aid back in January when the Bush Administration shifted its rhetoric into full Wilsonian mode. It burned on the way down, I'll admit, but subsequent events in the Ukraine and Lebanon, not to mention the Iraqi election just days before the State of the Union Address, didn't have me doing an awkward John Kerry impression, arguing against my past self. Like Hillary, I've been tap dancing my way back to center stage, secure in the knowledge that the Bush folks have finally set their own feet in concrete. So now we've got another summer. It's 130 million degrees in Baghdad. The White House is off until Labor Day, and I stumble onto this recent George Lakoff column about the Democrats needing to "reframe" the debate on Iraq. Now, I pretty much agree with what Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute folks are trying to do. You don't counter 30 years of Republican momentum with parliamentary tactics. You counter it by looking deep into your language closet, throwing out the moldy stuff and refashioning the useful stuff into something that slices the skin. Stuff like...
Lakoff's big problem, of course, is that he's an academic, which means he likes to write as if the rest of us have no deadlines either. Instead of spelling out what the Democrats need to do in a crisp, succinct manner, he gives us an eight-item list. Strongly worded stuff like "resist Karl Rove's juicy bait" and "emphasize the progressive philosophy of Total Security." Zzzzz.... Seeing as how I'd just downed a cup of coffee that was a little higher octane than usual, I decided to rebut Lakoff's editorial in the comments section. Chances are nobody will read it, however, since it comes at the end of 250 other messages, so I'm republishing my deft rebuttal here.
For the sake of elegance, I can better your eight point Democratic political strategy with three words. Hijack the war. Republicans are fond of likening the GWoT to World War II. OK, let's play with this analogy a bit. We've captured North Africa. We've knocked Italy out of the war (a waste of precious time and strategic initiative, in my opinion, but what the heck). What's next? Imagine its July 1, 1944 and all FDR wants to talk about is how the Italian people need our support and never mind that Hitler guy since he's actually doing a pretty good job keeping the rest of the world safe from Bolshevism. That's pretty much the situation right now. Never mind Saudi Arabia because the Sauds have been so cooperative in helping us crack down on terror. Never mind Pakistan, because we need a strong government in that corner of the world to retain stability. Osama who? If you want to take a lesson from Rove, here it is: Audacity, audacity, audacity. You want offense? You want a show of force? Forget Syria. Forget Iran. Forget all the bit players. Demand simultaneous airstrikes on Saudi and Pakistani safehouses by 5 p.m. In fact, schedule it for the Fourth of July and bill it as "fireworks for freedom." Let the Bush clan's buddies in the middle east deal with the blowback. C'mon folks. If you're not thinking three moves ahead, you're not even in the game anymore. In contrast, what we have at the moment is truly the worst of both worlds: a low-intensity, society-straining conflict overseas providing cover for "normalcy"-era politics at home. Enough. The Bush Administration has shown quite clearly that it doesn't know how to manage this war and doesn't have a vision beyond maintaining its Congressional majority in 2006. It's time for somebody to step up and throw the hopscotch stone a few steps down the path. Forget timelines. Forget troop reductions. Give me 10,000 gay volunteers hitting Marine Corps recruiting stations on the same day. Each volunteer can make his or her enlistment contingent on the passage of a Constitutional amendment securing gay marriage and other rights. See what happens. Give me a ten week gasoline boycott that stops Exxon-Mobil's five year stock run dead in its tracks. See what happens. Give me a female silver star recipient willing to acknowledge that her comrades would probably be dead right now if she hadn't taken the initiative and found an off-base abortionist after a reckless R&R weekend back in 2004. Run her in absentia down in Florida against Katherine Harris or Tommy Franks. See what happens. Failing all that, how about just giving me Osama bin Laden's head on a fucking platter and a real reason to buy into this war besides "security." Frankly, I accept insecurity. At the moment, it's the best connection I have to the private walking a daily patrol in Baghdad. What I can't accept, however, is the notion that a guy who needs a fucking kidney dialysis machine once a week can hide in the mountains for three years. Give me a fucking break. Democratic party leadership, you have just received your marching orders. The Navy SEAL who takes out Osama and the general who shoves a constitution down Prince Abdullah's throat are the next president and vice president of these United States. Better hope they're on your side. If not, things are only going to become more awkward with time. [April 18, 2005] In honor of spring and the Mets' recent 6 game winning streak, I offer a brief reprise of the timeless comedy classic: "Streetgang or Baseball team?" [ [Sept. 10, 2004] Here in New York City, it is an eerily similar day, weather-wise to Sept. 11, 2001. That alone has me tripping down memory lane and visiting Robot Wisdom, Jorn Barger's excellent, albeit defunct weblog. Barger was a pretty outspoken anti-Zionist before the Sept. 11 attacks and, like just about everybody else, took a few weeks to put the events of that morning into some form of context that didn't force the complete annihilation of his pre-9/11 political worldview. The results were often unfortunate. I had to tune out for a week after he introduced Paul Wolfowitz as "the Pentagon's Top Jew." I had to tune back in, however, when it quickly became apparent that Robot Wisdom was linking to invasion-hinting stories the major papers wouldn't touch until Scowcroft blew the whistle and that Wolfowitz was playing a key role in each of those stories. Over the next few months, I learned to read with a heavy filter, as I always do when it comes to interesting news. Anyway, a return visit to the Sept-Oct.15, 2001 stretch of the Robot Wisdom archive is illuminating. For one thing, almost every story link is dead, meaning that a lot of recent history has already fallen by the wayside. Barger was a pretty diligent documenter of Pentagon attempts to go behind the State Department's back, so this loss is pretty profound. I mean, the stories are still out there in various fringe magazines, papers, and web sites, but the amount of effort to reclaim each one would take years of effort. Occasionally, a gem still pops out, like this transcript of an October 8, 2001 CNN "Crossfire" dialogue in which Edward Peck, the Reagan-era ambassardor to Iraq, bristles in response to conservative calls for an Iraq invasion.
EDWARD PECK, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: Let me answer your question. I think it's not a mistake for the following reasons. No. 1 is that nobody in this world -- with the possible exception of Tony Blair -- gives us the right to decide who rules Iraq. That is not part of our charter. It is not part of our mandate. Now, they can't stop us, because we are who we are. But when you take out Saddam Hussein, the key question you have to ask then is, what happens after that? And we don't have a clue. Nobody knows, but it's probably going to be bad. And a lot of people are going to be very upset about that, because that really is not written into our role in this world is to decide who rules Iraq. [Sept 2. 2004] So the Republican National Convention is happening in New York City. I've avoided most of the craziness, except for one trip over to Manhattan on Saturday. My wife and I attended the pro-choice rally on Saturday at City Hall. It was co-hosted by NARAL and Planned Parenthood and featured all the usual suspects, plus me. Personally, I'm a little more pro-abortion than I am pro-choice. Let the Catholic ladies whine about dead babies. Six billion people on the planet is about five billion too many. I look at some of the parental choices nowadays and seriously wonder if the Chinese are so wrong with their one child per-family policy. As a responsible male with no babymamas to his credit, I felt it my job to attend the rally as a representative of my kind. Men can choose, too. I choose not to let anybody have my baby. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that my political views tend to fit imperfectly with the whole liberal/conservative frame. I'm a registered Democrat who supports gun rights, doesn't stress too much about the capital punishment issue and generally buys the whole smaller-is-better philosophy when it comes to federal government. I don't view my taxes as particularly onerous and would be willing to pay more if it got me better health and child care services and Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse on a platter. I support what we're doing in Iraq, yet agree with the criticism that we went in way, way understrength, mainly for ideological reasons (see later rants). Long story short: I'm the kind of voter who could conceivably buy into giving George Bush a second term if I didn't have this weird thing called a memory. Take last night's speech by Zell Miller, the pseudo-Democratic senator from Georgia who has made a career out of pimping the Republican agenda. Frankly, it was the first time I'd ever seen Miller's face. Given what little I knew about him going into the convention, I expected to find his arguments in favor of Bush iritating, yet compelling. Boy was I wrong. Less than 60 seconds into the speech, Miller steps on a rhetorical landmine that leaves me seething for the next 10 minutes. Here's the excerpt:
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger." Fearful that I was being too harsh on Bush, I went looking for that speech. I didn't find the "go out and shop" line, but I did find this quick summary in the president's Sept. 20, 2001 speech to Congress.
I ask you to live your lives and hug your children... I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here... I ask you to continue to support the victims of this tragedy with your contributions... The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation, and I ask you to give it... I ask for your patience, with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security and for your patience in what will be a long struggle... I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy... Finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform, and for our great country. I've had major gripes with this message, but as Bush has argued pretty consistently, this isn't a normal war. Fine. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. If you want me to hold my post for the duration, I'll do it. Just don't have your lieutenants tell me to be a good soldier metaphorically when you never asked me to be one in reality. Dec. 23, 2003 We've got an Orange alert Christmas going here. Could be a misdirection ploy. Could be the administration's just trying to get people freaked out just like they did in the run up to the elections. Then again, it could be real. News reports say they the inside sources are expecting something on the 9/11 scale within the next two weeks. Whatever. It will probably blow over. At the same time...Tracy and I have a 7 a.m flight to Minnesota tomorrow morning. After that we drive down to Iowa for Christmas with Tish, Dave, Donnie & Mom and Dad. After a few days of that, it's back to Minnehaha to hang with Aaron, Laura & Jane, then home. If, on the off chance, some knucklehead decides to take out our plane tomorrow, a few things for the record: I have lived a happy, lucky life. The last 2 and a half years of it have been with a woman who is my perfect match in every way. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes frustrating, Tracy is about as close to a perfect partner as a guy can get. I can't count the dinners we've spent laughing or fuming over some topic of discussion (usually President Bush. If this turns out to be the last entry in this journal, I dare anybody to make fun of Howard Dean's comment about America being no safer than it was before Saddam Hussein's capture). Anyway, I've fulfilled many of the things i've wanted to fulfill. Sure, I had more things I wanted to do, but so did the guys who died in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last two years. Getting on a plane is a lot less challenging than doing a patrol, so I will do it without sniveling. No patriotic bullshit. No "God Bless America" crap. I will say this, though: since moving to New York City I have gained a new respect for the immigrants who come here. They believe in America more than I do, I'm afraid, and it shames me into being a better citizen. I worry sometimes that they don't have the proper values, but they'll get them over time. After all, my ancestors came here to make it rich way back when. It wasn't until a generation or three later that all the talk about democracy and civil rights worked their way into the daily dinner discussion. Having enough food on the table makes it easy to talk about that kind of stuff. Anyway, that's it. If somebody else is reading this by the end of January, 2004, there's a living will and a last will draft on one of these computers. If not, well consider the previous passage for the record, circa Christmas 2003. July 29, 2003 I'm finding the Craigslist writers' forum a great mid-day distraction. Most online b-boards suck. Either the barrier to entry is too high [I mean, c'mon, you expect me to remember my password and craft a semi-intelligent posting at the same time] or way too low, meaning the board quickly devolves into one or two curmudgeons slapping down all the newbies who post in. The Craigslist writers forum seems to occupy an emerging middle ground. You can login in pretty quickly or you can post anonymously, using a jokey pseudonym. It doesn't take more than a second to post under a fresh pseudonym, so threads quickly take on a life of their own. After two or three posts, the pseudonyms become thread-specific, creating new opportunities for frivolity. People take their posting seriously but not too seriously, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I took advantage of the quick pseudonym generator to write an off-the-wall post in response to a 20 year-old writer asking for advice from the grownups on the board. I chose a pseudonym, because I didn't want people to think I was yet another curmudgeon. When I went back a few days later, I was pleased to find that people had taken the post in good spirit. One even went so far as to call it "marvelous," making me suddenly eager to claim credit for the anonymous words I wrote. So far, I have resisted that urge. Since this is a completely different site, however, I feel no obligation not to brag [see above entry]. After all, if the piece really is marvelous, maybe it deserves a permanent place. Without further ado, here's the post. Again, this is in response to a 20 year old asking for career advice. My chosen pseudonym is "thirtysomething."
OK, I'm gonna pretend you're the 20 year old version of me. You probably aren't, so if the knife feels too sharp, chalk it up as my own self-criticism. SCENE: A 32 year old writer gets in a time machine and travels back 12 years. When he gets out of the time machine, he finds himself standing in front of his 20 year old self, sitting on a couch watching an early episode of the "Simpsons." 32 Year Old Me: Get the f- off the couch and go write something. 20 Year Old Me: But it'll never get published. 32: Of course it won't. Nobody gets their first piece published. That's why you get it out of the way and move on to the second, third, and fourth pieces. If you're lucky, the fifth piece will make enough to pay the photocopying costs of sending it out. 20: Speaking of...where do I send it? Will I need an agent? 32: Who cares? Worry about the writing first, business second. By the time you've figured out the business side, your creative juices will have dried up so totally, you'll wish you spent more time recording all the wacky thoughts that hit you on a daily basis when you were 20. 20: Makes sense... 32: And go get a job at the student newspaper for crying out loud. 20: But I don't want to be a journalist. I want to be a Writer. Capital W. You know: Hemmingway, Octavio Paz, Joan Didion, etc. etc. 32: First of all, all those writers started out as journalists. Second of all, writers who don't start out as journalists are the kind of writers who produce long, boring books that nobody ever reads. Third of all, being a reporter is the quickest way to prove you can pay for food with your writing. It's also the shortest path to finding out you really hate writing and would much rather be a rich investment banker. Oh yeah, there's one more reason, which I almost forgot. You're gonna spend the next 20 years of your life reading about assholes who jumped straight from the Ivy League Daily or Campus Chuckles Magazine to some kickass media job. Why not be the asshole instead of the guy who secretly envies the asshole? 20: Is that it? 32: One more thing: Get a freakin' haircut. It's embarassing. I don't generally write about politics, whether for amusement or for pay. I do keep an offline journal, however, with the occasional political rant. Every year when August rolls around, I start a new volume. While polishing up the previous year's journal, I've taken a chance to review some of the entries. As you can guess, with the war in Iraq and all, it has been a more political year than most. Anyway, I thought this one was the most interesting. I wrote it on the eve of the Iraq invasion, and it reflects some the personal frustration that has been building, for me, in the months since Sept. 11, 2001. Here it is.
Tracy gets back from London today. I'm glad she went. I missed her. I'm also glad she's coming back. Bush gave the 48 hour ultimatum on Monday night, so the hostilities could start as soon as tonight. Things have been sort of calm since the Bush speech. I contemplated boycotting it, but when it came on, I decided to watch the first few minutes. Bush didn't seem as insufferable as usual. His argument was fairly straightforward. No humility, of course. That's the one thing I remember about Gulf War I. Some morning TV interviewer was taking a crack at Bush's "wouldn't be prudent" catch phrase, the one that provided Dana Carvey so much comedic mileage on SNL. Bush jumped on the catch-phrase as soon as it came out of the host's mouth, saying something like "I owe it to the families of our servicemen to be prudent, so, yes, prudence is important to me," Funny how you don't hear talk like that this time around. Anyway, the real thing that calmed me down was the Frontline special they showed after the speech. It was a compendium of shows discussing the U.S.-Iraq relationship post-1990. Put another way, it was a gentle reminder of what a scumbag Hussein was and is. Anyway, the problem with being on the consumer side of the media is that you don't have access to the means of production. You can't go through the tape library and doublecheck quotes like the Bush quote I just mentioned. For example, I remember Colin Powell delivering the "either your with us or against us" line on Sept. 11 or 12. That was back when Powell was the only guy in the administration who didn't look totally overwhelmed by the situation and was appearing on all the networks as a de facto spokesperson. As I recall, it was a pretty effective line. It was the first example of the current administration appealing for allies like the original Bush administration did back in 1990. Now, of course, most news accounts attribute the line to Bush, usually in a negative context. Instead of appealing for allies in the anti-terrorist cause, it's seen as a challenge to allies unwilling to go the full measure. A total flip-flop in other words. With no access to the original Powell appearance, though, it feels like I heard the original line in a dream or something. I get that feeling a lot, especially when the Bush family is involved. I remember attending a Jesse Jackson speech as a freshman at Stanford back during the 1988 election. Jackson was losing the race, but the California primary offered a final opportunity to cast a "fuck you" vote to the east coast party establishment that was already on the way to engineering the blowout Dukakis loss. Eager to send that "fuck you" vote, I went to the speech to see if Jesse could win me over. I have to admit. It was an awesome speech, one that drew on Jesse's copious public-speaking skills honed during his many years as a minister and civil rights activist. In the middle of it, he delivered a line that went something like this: "Instead of having a war on Nicaraugua, we should be having a war on drugs." I remember it getting a big ovation from the audience, which wasn't tough, and it stuck in my mind because it seemed to speak directly to Jesse's one strength: That he knew better than any candidate how drastically things had deteriorated in U.S. inner cities during the Reagan Administration. Anyway, I filed it away as a clever slogan even when Jesse conceded defeat at the Democratic convention. The slogan disappeared entirely during the run-up to the final election only to re-emerge, this time out of the mouth of George Bush, in the weeks leading up to his inauguration. What is this? I thought. The president is ripping off one of the most liberal planks of the Democratic party platform. Of course, that's not how the media saw it. As soon as the words "war on drugs" became a Bush Administration slogan, every editor and hack leftist writer treated it as if it were something forged in the deepest, darkest conservative think tank. Not that I didn't mind having people associate the image of cops kicking down crackhouse doors and seizing vehicles in violation of the Fourth Amendement attached with the Republican Party, but as the guy who credited Jackson for coming up with the "war on drugs" slogan a few months earlier, I felt a weird distaste at how quickly the media, and even Jackson himself, forgot about the original context of the phrase. Now that "war on drugs" has entered the history books as editorial short hand for the well-meaning but clueless domestic policies of the first Bush White House, I can only shake my head and laugh. No wonder the Bush folks act so hostile to the news media. Anyway, I felt a similar tremor of powerless laughter while watching the "Frontline" special when it tried to revise the historical record on the whole tension between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the various, so-called "neo-con" members of the White House elite [i.e. Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.] The way the "Frontline" producers painted it, the neo-con wing was drowned out by the Powell wing in the White House until 9/11 offered an opportunity to assert itself. As I recall, the neo-con wing was running the show from the jump -- at least in terms of media message. You had the treaty pull outs [Kyoto and ABM] and all the talk about space and missile shields. [Note: if you want a good laugh (or a good cry), check out this attempt by NY Times Magazine reporter James Traub to sum up the Bush Administration worldview circa January, 2001]. The weekend before the attack, Time Magazine documented the increasingly conservative nature of the cabinet with its "Where Have You Gone Colin Powell?" cover. Then again, 9/11 damn near snuffed out the necons before they'd had a chance to achieve full "faction"-level status. Like I said above, Powell was the only guy in the cabinet with commanding presence during that first tumultuous week. People give Bush credit for "pulling us all together" but I never saw any evidence of that outside the op-ed pages. From where I was standing, the only three guys who seemed to rise above the blather, enough so that I felt the urge to sit forward and listen whenever they came on the television screen in the first 72 hours after the Sept. 11 attacks were Giuliani in NYC, Powell in D.C., and Peter Jennings on ABC. I'll give Bush credit for his megaphone speech on the debris pile--a master stroke of improvisation and a good sign of where Bush's true political power lies--but that wasn't until Friday, a full three days after the attack. In fact, I remember quite a few people grumbling about Bush's failure to get his ass up here sooner. After all, D.C. and N.Y.C. are only five hours apart by car, and he was already taking heat for his Southwestern Airline-style roundabout journey from Florida to DC on the day of the attacks. Again, memory is a dangerous thing, especially when you don't have the video library to back it up. Once things settled, of course, people got their bearings. Bush delivered a couple decent speeches, amping up the fire and brimstone with each pass. Ashcroft stopped looking like a deer in the headlights and started looking more like the county sherriff, vowing to throw anyone in jail who so much looked crosswise at the American flag. The neo-cons, of course, dropped all the talk about missile shields, recognizing their ineffectiveness against terrorism and started playing up the blame-Iraq meme. As soon as the bombs started falling in Afghanistan, you had Rumsfeld replacing Powell on TV and Safire on the NY Times op-ed page laying out the argument to invade Iraq, arguments obviously slipped to him by the neo-con wing in the White House/Pentagon. Simply put, 9/11 got the log rolling, but the neo-cons, after nearly getting tossed in the water, regained their political footing. The rest, of course, is history -- or at least the initial draft of it. Viewed sixteen months later, of course, it all looks continuous: The 1992 defense report first draft with Wolfowitz's line about "pre-emptive" attacks, the 1998 letter to Clinton calling for an invasion of Iraq, the post 9/11 build up. I think I might have even glimpsed a copy of the Sept. 12 New York Times op-ed page in which Safire voiced a concern that Saddam was the Barzini to Osama's Tataglia in the whole sordid affair. Here is where the memory gets too shaky to trust, however. What I do remember clearly is a 1-2 week period when things went liquid both here in New York City and, judging by what I saw on TV, in Washington, D.C. as well. That's when Powell seemed on track to rebuilding the 1990 coalition only to lose it when the "unilateral" contingent rebranded this approach as too wimpy. The recent "Frontline" special merely completes the full-scale revision. Now, Powell and his doctrine are the primary reasons Bush played it so soft in the final stages of the Gulf War, why so many Shi'ites had to die, why, throughout the Clinton Administration, we failed to take out Osama and why Saddam still holds power in Baghdad today. I'm no Colin Powell fan -- frankly, I see him as being as political as the rest of 'em -- but this pinning the blame on one power broker in the White House seems a little too artfully constructed. I'm willing to give the guy his share of blame, but then, I'm willing to give a bunch of people their fair share of the blame right now. Heaping it all on Powell's head to make the neo-con contingent seem like the butch side of the Bush White House serves a few political agendas that don't exactly need serving right now, in my opinion. It also fits poorly with the words that were coming out of my TV set on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13, 2001. I guess the moral of the story is twofold:1) Leaders become apparent in moments of uncertainty and 2) Politicians become apparent when things start to gel again. I think it's a mistake to see a flip-flop of power in late 2001. I think it's more astute to say that the neo-con faction turned lemons into lemonade, retaining its grip on foreign policy. Lately, on the urgings of Christopher Hitchens, I've reacquainted myself with the Hegelian dialectic. Viewed from a Hegelian perspective, it fits together pretty neatly. Neo-con Thesis: Instead of long term peacekeeping projects, the U.S. can get more bang for its military buck by subduing the states that fuel regional instability (e.g. Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc.) A missile shield will help us in situations where we need to pressure countries with a limited nuclear arsenal (e.g. North Korea, Iran, and possibly China). 9/11 antithesis: Having a powerful military doesn't protect you against stateless terrorists. Missile shields can't shoot down hijacked jet liners. Post-9/11 Neo-con Synthesis: Yes, but terrorists rely on key states for safe harbors and weapons. The U.S. can get more bang for its military buck by subduing these key states. That's why we need to invade Iraq, press for "regime change" in Iran and Syria, and keep the screws on North Korea, while being more interventionist in places like Colombia, Indonesia, the Phillippines, etc., etc March 15, 2004 Hmm...it's been a full year since that above entry. Some of the thoughts still hold up. On the whole, however, my trepidation over the Iraq invasion has eased. Maybe it's the historian in me, but somewhere deep inside the clusterfuck Iraq has become, I see the roots of something interesting. The ratification of the recent interim constitution, for example, seems encouraging, especially when you consider how all the rival factions seemed to unite around a single issue: their shared antipathy for the U.S. Shared antipathy isn't necessarily a bad thing. As an old coach once said: Hate me all you want, but at least hate me as a team. If Iraq can survive the next two years without succumbing to a Yugoslavia-style civil war, I think Bush will go down as a success, whether or not he wins re-election this fall. If it does crumble, however, I stand by my initial pre-Iraq prediction: The so-called "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive war is simply an expansion of the "Roosevelt Corollary." For those who don't remember, the Roosevelt Corrollary was Teddy Roosevelt's extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the stated policy in which the U.S. committed itself to resisting any and all attempts by European nations to expand their colonial holdings within the Western Hemisphere. To maintain that policy, Roosevelt argued, the U.S. reserved the right to intervene militarily in any nation whose domestic instability might provide a magnet for outside intervention. Such is the rationale for our multiple incursions into Panama, the Domican Republic, Nicaragua and Haiti over the last century. Indeed, though it didn't make it into the media coverage, I have high suspicions that our hasty effort to escort Jean Betrand Aristide out of Haiti earlier this month owes much to the fact that France -- our eternal, everlasting nemesis, France -- had the temerity to send a military detachment ahead of our own. Talk about cheeky. Anyway, back to Iraq. Though it lies in a totally different hemisphere, I harbor fears that, should the current democratic experiment disintegrate, Iraq, too, will become one of those weak, dysfunctional nations the U.S. has to invade every 10 to 25 years. Only time will tell, of course, but those who describe last year's invasion as "unprecedented' in U.S. history need to consult their history books a little more closely. [Jan. 10, 2002] This was my kickoff rant for the page. For it, I picked a favorite pet peeve: self-deprecation. Frankly, I find self deprecation to be a white guy failing. The whiter the guy, the more self deprecation you have to wade through in the course of the conversation. Asian guys fall victim to it too, but that only reinforces my thesis, because white guys and Asian guys tend to be interchangeable in many social situations. [Actually, the piece of self-deprecating humor that triggered this rant was an item written by an Asian guy in my college alumni magazine. The guy had a four sentence entry in the class notes. In the first sentence he joked about the year he wasted playing Sega Genesis. In the second he writes about going to med school. In the third sentence he writes about his current kickass job as the chief of orthopedic surgery (or whatever) at some Southern California Hospital. Finally, in the fourth sentence he writes about being "lucky enough to find a girl who actually wanted to marry me." Give me a break.] Anyway, back to my diatribe...I rarely encounter self-deprecation when dealing with black or Latino guys. In fact, I often encounter the exact opposite phenomenon: an acute sense that the merest hint of disrespect will lead to an ass-kicking. This makes sense, of course. When you're living in the ghetto or barrio, self-disrespect has Darwinian implications. Actually, this is one of the sub-themes of the Eminem move "8 Mile." Rabbit can't beat his opponents using traditional "I'm blacker/smarter/tougher" battle tactics, so he pulls a jujitsu move and disses himself, thus taking away their ammo. The strategy catches his chief opponent by surprise, because it goes against Rule No. 1 of the urban jungle: Never play yourself for a punk. OK, I can hear my British colleagues clearing their throats. There go the Yanks, mixing race and class again. Clearly, self-deprecation is a function of power (in other words: class). People in power try to disguise it with humor and people without the power have no time for such shenanigans. This is a valid point, but I think the Eminem example shows where the class/race parallel breaks down here in the U.S. That Eminem comes from the same class as most black MCs is the key to his hip hop credibility. That he can also draw on the white guy "loser" shtick laid down by Beck, Kurt Cobain, and Iggy Pop makes him unique in the Hip Hop world and, hence, a superstar. The Brits have a right to be confused, I suppose. Self-deprecation so pervades British humor that the two concepts are practically inseparable. Witness the following excerpt from Media Bistro's interview with Wall Street Journal reporter (and London native) Matthew Rose.
I was working for the European Journal in London, covering very large, quite dull European technology companies, which one by one showed themselves to be remarkably, deliciously fraudulent.... How did you get to the European Journal in the first place? My entire life is a series of random flukes. This was one of those situations in which one thing led to another led to another. I went to an American graduate school, the Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, for two years, and came back to London, stupidly chasing a forlorn love, which fell to bits. I got an internship at European Business News, which was a business TV station owned by Dow Jones. So I was running around with tape from midnight to nine in the morning, while no one was watching. And the offices of the Journal were below, and they were advertising for a news assistant--a copy maker, fax collator, chart builder--and I went downstairs and accidentally answered all of the questions right and got that job. Just once I'd love to see a white guy interviewee click into Muhammad Ali mode, grab the microphone out of the interviewer's hands and start rhyming off the cuff...
Or a free press hotdog I couldn't eat. Dangle a participle in your face Editors go crazy when they get a taste 'cuz, I Am The Greatest. Of All Time. Dec. 24, 2001 The last prayer I ever made....
To the almighty creator who has chosen to make 2001 the worst year in New York's 375 year history, We forgive you. We forgive you for your inscrutable logic. We forgive you for your fanatical followers. We forgive you for your failure to protect the many lives entrusted in your care. At the same time, we thank you. We thank you for sparing our own lives. We thank you for leaving us in good health. We thank you for giving us the opportunity to celebrate another Christmas, Hannukah, or Ramadan with the people we love. Most importantly, we thank you for that love. It has only grown stronger and more durable during the last 12 months. We do not dare to presume that this growth was according to your divine plan, but if it was, we thank you for that as well. Amen. Despite that advice, I fell early into the clutches of Christianity as a kid. The neighbor lady, a wacky Pentecostal-type, hosted a weekly Good News Club and, as an incentive to get kids to come, baited the trap with Oreo cookies, potato chips and all the other things my Mom would never buy at the grocery store. As my fellow eight year olds and I munched on Fritos, Mrs. Roller would regale us with the the life story of the Prophet Elijah, the guy my Jewish grandparents always joked that the last place setting at the table was set for, and Jesus, a weird guy who loved everybody and yet wanted to blow up airplanes in mid-flight (at least according to the Rapture-inspired paintings Mrs. Roller seemed to take pride in collecting. This early brush with Christianity succeeded in two respects: 1) It helped delay the onset of casual swearing until my sophomore year in high school and 2) It made movies such as "The Exorcist," when I finally saw it, a million times scarier than they would have been if I hadn't spent entire nights of my childhood awake, fretting over the fate of my family during the End Times. Eventually, however, the buzz faded. Although I still offered the occasional bedtime prayer, the ritual itself it had devolved into something I did not so much to keep God filled on my latest day at school as to stay on the safe side. Simply put, I was following the opposite path of Martin Luther. Where I had once been obsessed about sin and salvation, I was rattling off the Nicene Creed and heading back out to the field. This process was further accelerated when I stumbled onto the Robert Graves' political analysis of Greek mythology ( Greek Myths I & II), Hebrew mythology (Hebrew Myths) and Sir James Fraser's The Golden Bough. |