I'M HONORED

This shiny happy website lists me thusly:

Duss, Matthew: This Seattle, Washington New Age Hippie Jew feels that Israel is an illegal occupier and colonizer. Really? Read this. He also a supporter of far left Jewish group, Brit Tzedek.

Is my writing really that good? Or is it my self-deprecating manner, my vaguely Semitic good looks, or my mania for smoked fish and latkes? As it happens, I am in fact not a member of the tribe, but thanks. I am a supporter of Brit Tzedek V'Shalom though, so they got me there.

The charge of "new age hippie," however, is one I consider worthy of pistols at dawn.

Readers with strong stomachs can follow the "Read this" link to get an idea of the sort of racist historical revisionism which characterizes that website, and which also prevails among many hardcore Zionists. Their central claim, most infamously elucidated in Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial (which one might call The Bell Curve of Middle East Studies, though that might be giving Peters' work too much credit), is that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, that the al Nakhba refugees of 1948 were recent Arab immigrants from surrounding regions who had been attracted to Palestine by Jewish enterprise and were "occupying" Jewish ancestral land, and that the Dome of the Rock was actually built in 1947 and specially painted to look "aged" (okay, Peters actually doesn't make that last claim, but it would not be out of place.) The book has been widely discredited, but unfortunately its central thesis, like so many poisonous-but-scholarly-sounding lies which serve to justify bigotry, persists.

COLE

The good professor argues with Bush.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

Stacius turned me on to them and I haven't been able to listen to anything else for the past week.

FIVE YEARS AFTER

Bitterlemons has a series of essays reflecting on five years of intifada.

FITAR B'FROST?

David Frost to join al Jazeera.

Sir David is to appear on al-Jazeera International, the pan-Arab news network's new English-language channel, due to be launched next spring.

The Qatar-based channel said Sir David, who broadcast his final Breakfast with Frost programme for the BBC in May, would be among the "key on-air talent".

Sir David was quoted as saying he felt "excitement" about his new role.

BUSH: ON GOD'S ORDERS

In yet another in a series of episodes that could have been specially designed in a lab to offend Muslims:

U.S. President George W. Bush believed that God told him to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, a senior Palestinian official says in a broadcast interview.

The British Broadcasting Corp. On Thursday released an excerpt from an interview with Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath that was part of a series called "Israel and the Arabs." Shaath described his first meeting, in company with Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen, in June 2003.

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did. "'And then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq." And I did. "'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it."'

Abu Mazen told the BBC that, at the same meeting, Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

And Karen Hughes was making such progress!

It's not hard to imagine the thought process, using the term loosely of course, that went into this inestimable PR nightmare. I'll bet Bush figured that he could speak and relate to Abu Mazen as a man of faith, completely clueless that his American evangelical "God is my buddy!" approach to religion would certainly be unfamiliar, and very likely offensive, to Mazen. Also, over the past 1400 years Muslims have had some experience with war in the name of God, and it's rarely been very enjoyable. Would it be indelicate to suggest that it's high time someone grabbed the president by his head and screamed this into his face?

As for Bush "getting" the Palestinians a state (after they've agitated, struggled, and suffered for one for more than half a century) well, that's really sweet of him. Of course, by the time Bush makes good on this, Palestine will probably consist of a few isolated, extremely overcrowded Arab enclaves amidst a matrix of Israeli settlements and bypass roads, settlements which Bush himself gave the green light to continue building. But it will be a state, just like Iraq and Afghanistan are democracies, so quit complaining.

UPDATE: The SF Chronicle has more.

"One of the biggest problems the Bush administration has is the translation of American Christian culture to the world, and specifically to Muslim countries," said commentator Micah D. Halpern, author of "What You Need to Know About: Terror."

"It's not that these societies are foreign to Christians, it's just that the Christianity that Bush embraces is not the Christianity that these Muslim countries see at home," Halpern said. "In that mistranslation, his message is ballooned out of proportion. One of America's biggest diplomatic mistakes is their lack of understanding of local Muslim and Arab cultures abroad. You can't just throw out the word God and assume that everyone's on the same page."

NOONAN!

Holy Dolphin Lady never disappoints:

What everyone forgets about the case of Robert Bork in his confirmation hearings is that regular people watched him, listened to the workings of his fabulous and exotic mind, saw the intensity, the hunger for intellectual engagement, caught the whiff of brandy and cigars and angels dancing, noticed the unusual hair, the ambivalent whiskers, and thought, "Who's this weirdo?"

I...I...oh.

New feature: Peggy Noonan Mad Libs (which is how I suspect she writes anyway)

What everyone forgets about the bootleg video of Robert Bork in his shower is that regular people watched him, listened to the workings of his fabulous and exotic colon, saw the intensity, the hunger for spicy beef short ribs, caught the whiff of fire and brimstone and women dying of illegal back-alley abortions, noticed the unusual sideburns in the shape of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the ambivalent hygiene, and thought, "Who's frying eggs?"

Maybe Rob, Erik, and Lance would like to play.

WHATWHATWHAT?

Shorter John Cornyn:

Harriet Miers is a qualified nominee because she was a trial lawyer.

VERY METAL

Seen on the bus yesterday: Scruffy young dude listening to extreme heavy metal on those old-style headphones, young lady sits down next to him, he reaches into his backpack and withdraws a canister of whipped cream, says to her, all serious: "Would you like some whipped cream?" She declines, and he proceeds to spray whipped cream into his mouth for the next few blocks.

Maybe that move has worked for him in the past, I don't know.

LENIN

What to do with an old tyrant's cadaver?

For eight decades he has been lying in state on public display, a cadaver in a succession of dark suits, encased in a glass box beside a walkway in the basement of his granite mausoleum. Many who revere him say he is at peace, the leader in repose beneath the lights. Others think he just looks macabre.

Time has been unkind to Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins. Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved?

Revisiting a proposal that thwarted Boris N. Yeltsin, who faced down tanks but in his time as president could not persuade Russians to remove the Soviet Union's founder from his place of honor, a senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin raised the matter last week, saying it was time to bury the man.

May I suggest kicking him out of a helicopter somewhere over the Siberian tundra?

And here's the NYT playing to caricature:

Some still see in [Lenin] the architect of a grand and daring social experiment. Others describe an opportunist who ushered vicious cronies to power, resulting in a totalitarian police state.

And still others recognize that, vicious as his cronies and successors may have been, it was Lenin himself who defined the terms and exemplified the uses of party-state terror. It's way past time to dispense with any illusions that the dungeon which the Soviet Union became was in some way a Stalinist abberration of Lenin's idealism, rather than the necessary result of Lenin's eliminationist ideology.

BROOKHISER

Richard Brookhiser thinks he spies anti-semitism on the left. Or is it anti-Zionism? Or just pro-Palestinianism? Apparently they're all the same.

My National Review colleague Byron York reported on last Saturday’s anti-war rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. The main message of the rally was President Bush’s evil and stupidity—fair enough, in a two-party system—and the main instance of it was Iraq...But another theme was anti-Zionism. As Mr. York reports, kaffiyehs outnumbered American flags. George Galloway, the left-wing M.P., wore one around his neck. Occasionally, the themes were weirdly conflated: One group of college kids chanted, “From Palestine to New Orleans, no more money for the war machine.”

Having been to more than a few such demonstrations myself, I've observed that some of the rhetoric and signage occasionally crosses the line. But, the presence of George Galloway aside, the mere display of Palestinian kaffiyehs does not in itself indicate anti-Zionism, let alone anti-semitism, any more than the display of the Israeli flag promotes the forcible transfer of Palestinians to Jordan.

Then:

Think of the word “neocon” and its current usage. The actual neocons were Jewish intellectuals who began thinking outside the Great Society box in the 70’s. Some of them—Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz—became conservative Republicans. Others—Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer—remained liberal Democrats. Pat Moynihan allowed the neocons to say that they weren’t all Jewish. But none of that is what “neocon” now means. “Neocon” now means hook-nosed Nosferatu-the-vampire warmongers who plotted the invasion of Iraq, and the dumb goyim they manipulate. When Mick Jagger sings about “sweet neocon,” or when Maureen Dowd uses the word, every other paragraph or so, that is what they evoke. They evoke it, I am afraid, even if they don’t intend to, for the words we use can carry their own freight, and we are not always in charge of packing and unpacking them

Yes, they may not even know it or mean it, but these people are trafficking in anti-semitism. But what about Irving Kristol when he self-identifies as a neoconservative? Would Brookhiser argue that Kristol, unbeknownst to Kristol himself, is a self-hating Jew?

It's certainly true that there are those who use politically loaded code-words to communicate politically incorrect messages and stereotypes. Take the GOP's use of "welfare mothers" (poor, lazy blacks) or "coastal elites" (dope-smoking homosexual Democrat pornographers), for example. The difference is that you don't see anybody proudly self-identifying as those things, let alone publishing books with the title. Regardless of the ethnicity of those with whom neoconservatism originated, the term has come to stand for an ideology of American global dominance.

Throughout the article, Brookhiser attempts to weave criticism of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza into a narrative of liberal anti-semitism, even trotting out the 1984 Jesse Jackson "Hymietown" episode as evidence. Oy. Brookhiser is a conservative whose writing I generally admire (his Founding Father is an excellent short biography of George Washington), but I don't think this sort of careless argumentation, the lazy conflation of pro-Palestinian with anti-Jewish, is at all productive. Further, when you publish a piece entitled "American Jews Unprepared For Attacks From the Left," it might be a good idea to provide a single example of such an "attack" that isn't two decades old.

DELAY

Indicted again. It's the little things like this that really make one's day.

BLAMING DAVID BROCK

This is just too much. David Frum on the Bill Bennet flap:

... my heart goes out to Bill Bennett this week. All of us who speak and write for a living have the experience of saying something less perfectly than we might later wish. If only life were like the Congressional Record, and we were all free to revise and extend our remarks. Still, even so, it seems to me almost incredible that anybody could have construed Bill Bennett's now controversial words about abortion and crime as anything other than a statement of his commitment to the equal value of all human life.

[snip]

I never did quite see the point of organizing an elaborate and lavishly fund website just in order to mobilize angry emails to conservative writers who would promptly delete them. I get it now, though: The real value of Brock's site is that it can invoke the values of honesty and integrity in media and then go on to damagingly distort the words and beliefs of its conservative targets. It seems a lousy way to make a living - but there's no denying that after a decade in the wilderness, David Brock is once again exerting his special and inimitable influence on American politics.

As I'm sure Frum knows, David Brock began his career as a tambourine player in the right-wing noise machine funded by cranky conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, the main purpose of which was to damagingly distort the words and beliefs of its liberal targets, precisely what Frum accuses Brock of doing now to conservatives, though I'm pretty sure Frum didn't have any problem with Brock back then. (Scaife's smear operation also is responsible for Ann Coulter's career as cable news' go-to shrew, among other egregious offenses.) Focusing on Brock and ignoring the broad and diversified right-wing propaganda operation of which Brock was only one part is like blaming Nicolas Cage for National Treasure, never mentioning Jerry Bruckheimer.

As for Bill Bennett, I don't think he deserves to be condemned as a bigot. He deserves to be condemned, as always, as a sanctimonious, hypocritical blowhard.

KHOURI

Rami Khouri on democracy in the Arab world:

The mechanics of democratic practices are increasingly common throughout the Arab world, but the substance of power remains firmly in the hands of small ruling elites. Of the three keys to power that controls entire societies - guns, money, and knowledge - the state's ruling elites still dominate the security-military systems and the national budgets that in turn define economic interests and distribution of wealth. Only the control of information through the mass media has been largely pried out of the hands of the state, due to the impact of regional satellite television, FM radio services, region-wide newspapers, and the Internet.

The real test of democratic rule will be when legitimately representative civilian bodies oversee and hold accountable those in the government who decide on national budget expenditures and security-military policies. That has not happened in any Arab country, but serious agitation in that direction is now evident in several countries, including most notably in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Bahrain, and Morocco.

A balance sheet of democracy in the Arab world would show that serious talk and some activism toward that end are now common throughout much of the region, but breakthroughs to success have yet to be achieved. When one Arab country does succeed in achieving democratic governance (probably with a strong Islamist tinge to it, like Turkey or Iraq), the impact throughout the region is likely to be electric, with other countries moving more quickly toward the same goal.

BAD IDEA

Over the past few weeks, Israel has been arresting Palestinian Islamist political activists to prevent them participating in upcoming elections.

The Israeli army is cracking down on civil servants and community leaders, including elected local government officials, throughout the West Bank, in what some believe to be a bid to force Hamas out of upcoming Palestinian elections.

Palestinian sources told Aljazeera.net that Israeli soldiers arrested on Monday dozens of Islamist political activists, including a number of municipal council officials.

One of the arrested is Hakim Shalalda, the mayor of Sair, 10km northeast of Hebron. Shalalda won the town's mayoral elections nearly three months ago.

[snip]

Last week, the Israeli army arrested the seven elected members of the municipal council of the village of Shuqba in the northern West Bank.

Israeli soldiers continue to carry out nightly raids targeting the homes of potential Islamist candidates for the third and last phase of the municipal elections in the West Bank, set to take place before the end of the year.

Hamas sources estimate the number of Islamic political leaders and activists arrested during the past 10 days is 450, including academics, teachers, civil servants, students and business people.

According to East Jerusalem lawyer Tawhid Shaban, who defends many of the detainees before Israeli military courts, up to 80% of the detainees have already been sent to the Negev desert detention camp, Kitziot.

Danny Rubinstein suggests that Israel's actions only strengthen extremists:

After all, everyone knows that Abu Mazen and his colleagues in the Fatah leadership are afraid of Hamas success in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (the parliament), which are to be held in late January. Against this background, people have begun to talk in the West Bank street about how the arrests are part of a scheme hatched by Abu Mazen and Ariel Sharon, with the aim of striking at Hamas and weakening it in the period leading up to the election. Such talk harms the chairman and his partners in the government.

Another outcome of the arrests that is possibly even more significant is that the Hamas movement could move increasingly toward clandestine underground activity. This is at odds with the Palestinian Authority's plan for dealing with it. Abu Mazen is trying to encourage Hamas to end terrorist activities and become a political party. He has had limited success, such as the cease-fire agreement in which Hamas was a partner, and its willingness to take part in elections to the city councils and to parliament. In the opinion of the Palestinian leadership, this is an important stage on the path of Hamas toward acceptance of the Oslo Accords and joining in the diplomatic process, which would mean recognition of the State of Israel.

Mass arrests such as those of last weekend, and the targeted assassinations, of course, make Hamas move backward, and strengthen its extremist wing. Since it is a movement that has won the admiration and respect of the masses, Israel's struggle against it must not take on a solely military character. An exclusively military campaign would not help. On the contrary, it would weaken Fatah and Abu Mazen and would fortify his opponents.

AUGUST WILSON (1945-2005)

Our country has lost a great treasure today.

I was introduced to Wilson's work by a high school English teacher who took our class to see The Piano Lesson in New York. Ten years later I found myself living in his neighborhood, Capitol Hill, Seattle, and would see him around regularly, reading the newspaper in a coffee shop, or walking with his daughter. While I certainly respected his privacy, I consider Wilson an artist of such magnitude that I did make a point of greeting him one day as he was strolling down the street, and telling him how much I love his work. He was very friendly and gracious. I'm glad that I did it.

RIP, and thank you.

BUCKLEY

Interesting article on William F. Buckley's 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. I've always been fascinated by Buckley, who, along with Joseph McCarthy, should be considered the father of modern American conservatism. A master debater and writer, he has the uncanny ability to give intellectual heft to ideas which are, in the end, quite destructive of genuine human liberty. I think this bit from the article perfectly captures the nature of Buckley's legacy:

Although he did not sound like a bigot - and indeed he was not - he seemed to give comfort to those who were.

There it is.

While we're on the subject, anyone who has never seen Buckley's catfight with Gore Vidal while they were commentators on the 1968 Democratic Convention should go watch, now.

SERENITY

Trying to do my part to push up its opening weekend grosses, I played hooky on Friday and went to a matinee of Serenity. It's been a while since I had this much fun at the movies. I enjoyed it so much I decided to wait a couple days before posting a review, thinking perhaps that I was just bedazzled by all the outer space coolness and the ZING! and the BOOM!, as has been known to happen. But no, a couple days' reflection confirms for me that it's a very strong film, and I'll probably try and catch it one more time in the theater. I'm pretty confident it would be enjoyed by someone who has never seen Firefly, though the experience will be much, much richer for anyone who has watched the series.

Let me get this out of the way: The dude falling on the sword at the beginning? That was messed up. That got a couple of "Daaaaaaaamn!"s out of me.

The action and the special effects are well done without being showy, but the strength of the film is the characters. All of them are played slightly darker than in the TV series, and it really works. Nathan Fillion is a great if somewhat unconventional leading man, and I would pay good money to watch Morena Baccarin fold laundry, but the true revelation of the cast for me remains Adam Baldwin as Jayne. I've been a fan of Baldwin's ever since 1980's My Bodyguard, his first film, but to my knowledge this is the first role in which he's ever steered this close to comedy, unless you count Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket, which maybe you could. Jayne, like Buffy's Xander, because he's the dimmest of the group, seems to get the best punchlines. In addition to being just outright funny and well-timed, they relieve the self-conscious, occasionally annoying (though occasionally sublime) cleverness of Joss Whedon's dialogue.

I'll leave it to others to make too much of the film's lite conservative-libertarian message regarding the imperfectability of human nature and the value of jes' lettin' people be. Me, I enjoyed the stuff getting blowed up real good. I was, however, mildly disappointed that Vera didn't make an appearance.

One question: The Reavers. They're crazy insane feral outer space cannibals, yet lucid enough to maintain spacecraft? Okay.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ROCK MUSIC

New feature.

In the song Middle of the Road, track one from The Pretenders' Learning To Crawl, the part where Chrissie Hynde gives that kitty cat growl leading into the harmonica solo.

That is a Great Moment in Rock Music.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: CONSERVATIVES BLAMING THE MEDIA

It's revealing of the sad state of conservative thought that Mark Steyn is considered by many conservatives to be one of their best writers. Ever the water-toting partisan clown, here we have Steyn dutifully pushing the always-useful "Blame the media!" meme in regards to coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Steyn seems to think that the fact that some of the worst rumours and predictions turned out to be untrue somehow exonerates the Bush gang, which is a bit like arguing that things are going great in Iraq because no one has set off a nuke yet (give Mark a few more months on that one). Take this:

The facts [the media] put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.

Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?

Okay, taking Steyn's critique at face value (instead of acknowledging it as the red herring which it is), I wonder if he would consider his critique equally applicable to the media's credulity and complicity in advancing "evidence" of Iraq's WMD, or in publicizing the Swift Boaters' allegations? Somehow I doubt it, but I suppose part of the fun of being a shameless hack is never having to consider such things.