eclecticism

There appears to be a bit of a tussle going on between George Clooney and The Huffington Post, where his “I am a liberal” post (now removed from THP) was printed.

> It’s George Clooney versus Arianna Huffington in a standoff worthy of “Good Night, and Good Luck.” > > The newly minted Oscar winner says he did not write a blog posted Monday on commentator Huffington’s Web site, though he gave her permission to use a compilation of his critiques of the Iraq war from interviews with Larry King and London’s The Guardian. > “Miss Huffington’s blog is purposefully misleading and I have asked her to clarify the facts,” Clooney, 44, said in a statement issued Wednesday. “I stand by my statements but I did not write this blog.” > > […] > > A rebuttal on [Huffington’s] Web site says she and her staff initially compiled a “sample blog” for Clooney from his interview answers because he wasn’t sure how a blog worked. > > Huffington said that after she sent Clooney the sample, a film publicist e-mailed her and three days later approved it, without any changes. > > “This was an honest misunderstanding,” she wrote. “But any misunderstanding that occurred, occurred between Clooney and the publicist. We based our decision to post on the unambiguous approval we received in writing.” > > Clooney’s publicist Stan Rosenfield disagreed. > > “It’s not a misunderstanding, it’s misrepresentation,” he said. “She knows what she was doing. She was saying to people that she had George Clooney’s blog and was printing it. George Clooney does not make statements. He answers questions.”

Arianna Huffington has since apologized and redefined some of THP’s editorial standards.

> At the beginning of the week, I was so focused on making it crystal clear that we did indeed have permission to run the Clooney blog that I was blinded to another extremely important issue: that a blog, where the source of the material is not clear, diminishes the amazing work of bloggers who day in and day out put their hearts and souls into writing their blogs. > > I can’t thank our commenters enough for, in different ways, driving this point home. > > I now realize that I made a big mistake in posting a blog without clearly identifying that the material in it didn’t originate as a blog post but was pieced together from previous interviews.

Sounds like everything’s pretty much wrapped up by now.

To me, this is notable primarily for two things:

1. The original post — whether or not it was penned by Clooney, said by Clooney, thought by Clooney, or created by painstakingly taping together shreds of paper from cut up and randomly shuffled cereal boxes and erotic novellas — which is still a worthy statement;

2. Clooney’s publicist’s unfortunate and hilariously pretentious pronouncement that, “George Clooney does not make statements. He answers questions.” That gave me the best laugh I’ve had all morning.

“Chime (Hot Tracks)” by Orbital from the album Hot Tracks 15th Anniversary Collectors Edition (1997, 5:34).

…just not out of that closet.

Rather, he’s just made the startling public admission that — believe it or not — he’s a liberal. And he’s not afraid to admit it.

> I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I’m proud of it. > > Too many people run away from the label. They whisper it like you’d whisper “I’m a Nazi.” Like it’s a dirty word. But turn away from saying “I’m a liberal” and it’s like you’re turning away from saying that blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, that women should be able to vote and get paid the same as a man, that McCarthy was wrong, that Vietnam was a mistake. And that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11. > > This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?). But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we’re all allowed to question authority. We have to agree that it’s not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to speak out. > > […] Bottom line: it’s not merely our right to question our government, it’s our duty. Whatever the consequences. We can’t demand freedom of speech then turn around and say, But please don’t say bad things about us. You gotta be a grown up and take your hits.

(via Mike)

Update: Apparently there’s a bit of a tussle going on between Clooney and The Huffington Post, where the above-quoted passage was posted.

> It’s George Clooney versus Arianna Huffington in a standoff worthy of “Good Night, and Good Luck.” > > The newly minted Oscar winner says he did not write a blog posted Monday on commentator Huffington’s Web site, though he gave her permission to use a compilation of his critiques of the Iraq war from interviews with Larry King and London’s The Guardian. > “Miss Huffington’s blog is purposefully misleading and I have asked her to clarify the facts,” Clooney, 44, said in a statement issued Wednesday. “I stand by my statements but I did not write this blog.”

One of these days I’m actually going to start reading more of Gore Vidal’s work, as each time I’ve run across him (beginning with his role as the Democratic incumbent facing down up and coming right-winger Bob Roberts in Tim Robbins’ excellent political satire), I’ve found him fascinating and incredibly intelligent.

There’s a two part interview with Vidal in TruthDig conducted just before the Oscars that has some wonderful quips in it. Part one looks primarily at the then-upcoming Oscars:

> If [Brokeback Mountain] were to win an Oscar, would it be a step forward in tolerance? How important is Hollywood in this equation? > > Well, it never has been, and I don’t see why it should be suddenly now. That it was made at all and that it was made so honestly and so well is a good thing, better than to make a mess out of it, or not try at all…. > > Look, homophobia is fed into every child in the United States at birth. It is unrelenting, it never lets up. They asked a whole raft of high school boys across the country a couple years ago, one of those polls about what they would most like to be in life, and what … they would hate to be, and so forth, and what they would most hate to be was homosexual. > > There wasn’t anyone, not one, who just skipped the question. They all said “oh no, that’s the worst thing you could be.” > > To get over that training, that’s generation after generation. And it has not done the character of our nation much good. And that’s why we are a joke to the rest of the world, because we carry on about sexual matters everyone else has forgotten about.

Part two concentrates on more political matters:

> This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against the Palestinian Oscar nominee, “Paradise Now,” with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with “terrorists.” > > Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can’t repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we’ve just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we’re not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we’re pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we’ve been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only “homeland security.” But there’s no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will! > > Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels…. > > Oh it’s just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?

(via Slog)

“Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk from the album Industrial Revolution, 2nd Edition (1977, 3:18).

Praire bounced into the room this morning as I was scanning headlines while I woke up. “Quick — name all the members of the Simpsons,” she said.

“Um…Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie.”

“Now — what are the five rights given by the first amendment?”

“…um. Oh. Heh…that’s not good. Let’s see,” I fumbled. “Freedom of speech, religion, freedom to assemble….”

She grinned. “That’s three.”

Kind of a sad commentary, isn’t it? At least I’m not alone.

> Americans apparently know more about “The Simpsons” than they do about the First Amendment. > > Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey. > > The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

For the record, here’s the First Amendment to the Constitution:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

“What the Hell” by Radioactive Goldfish from the album Rhythm and Rave (1992, 3:16).

I’ve always had a predilection for black humor. It’s a trait that will occasionally raise its head at entirely inappropriate times.

Like today, when I saw the following headline (which has since been replaced on CNN’s site):

All I could see in my head was a Toon Town riot, and I couldn’t help laughing. Wrong, and I’m going to hell…but funny.

(For the record, I think the local Muslim community is doing a far better job of responding to the cartoons than the rioters are. Also, until I read this article, I had no idea that the it was considered blasphemous to portray images of Mohammed. That little piece of information makes the anger at the cartoons a little more understandable to me — but I still in no way believe that the violence that’s taking place is the appropriate response.)

“Groove to Move” by Channel X from the album Technomancer (1996, 5:20).

What follows is a list originally posted on Yahoo and copied here because Yahoo tends to remove news articles two weeks or so after they’re posted. I also reformatted the list to make it easier to read.

These are the proposed cuts in Bush’s 2007 budget. A lot of things in here make me wince, but it’s the education sections that really make me mad. I want my 24.6 seconds back.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a mashup worth listening to: The Ciccones’ “Lies” (6.5Mb .mp3). While most of the all-Madonna mashup album is fairly hit-and-miss, this is by far the standout track. Over the music for “Live to Tell”, audio quotes from the justifications for the Iraq war are juxtaposed with the song’s original chorus:

> A man can tell a thousand lies,
> I’ve learned my lesson well,
> Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned,
> ‘till then, it will burn inside of me.

Cute and clever.

“Lies” by Ciccones, The from the album Immaculate Concoction, The (2005, 5:45).

Update: I munged up some of my math this morning and got the numbers slightly wrong. I’ve updated the post with correct numbers. They’re still scary and infuriating.

According to this morning’s Seattle Times, the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing approximately $118,000 per minute — $100,000/minute for the war in Iraq, and $18,000/minute in Afghanistan.

CNN/Money reported last October that the average cost of attending a four-year public university was approximately $12,127 per year, or $48,508 for four years.

In other words, 2.69 minutes worth of the money we’re spending in Afghanistan would pay for the average four-year degree. Only 29.1 seconds worth of the money we’re spending in Iraq would do the same. So would 24.6 seconds of the two operations combined.

Every day, we’re spending enough money in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for 3,503 four-year public school college degrees.

And yet, George Bush is asking for $70 billion more to pay for those wars, while cutting education funding by $12.7 billion.

> The bill the U.S. Senate passed in the last hours of its 2005 session is called a “budget reconciliation” - an attempt to force the federal budget into balance with spending cuts or tax increases. But there’s no way to reconcile one of the biggest items on the chopping block, aid to education, with the long-term interests of the nation, its students, families and economy. > > The bill includes a $12.7 billion cut in federal aid to education. The Senate passed it 51-50 with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote. The cut, the first in federal education spending in more than a decade, accounts for nearly a third of the bill’s spending reductions. > > […] If the House approves them, the cuts will be very real. Here’s what they will mean: > > * An increase in the federal Stafford Loan Rate from 4.7 to 6.8 percent. The will go to 8.25 percent in July. > > The higher interest rates mean that on average students will pay $2,000 more and parents $3,000 more. > > * Pell Grants to low and moderate-income students will remain frozen at $4,050 for the fourth straight year despite the president’s earlier promise to raise them to $5,100. > > According to the American Council on Higher Education, Pell Grants covered 84 percent of the cost of attending the average public four-year college when they were created in 1972. They now pay 34 percent. > > The cuts come at a bad time. In five years the average cost of tuition at a public university has increased by 57 percent, the cost of room and board by 44 percent. American higher education is becoming more unaffordable at a time when attending college has never been more important.

A conversation Prairie and I had while walking into NSCC about how we’re going to afford getting me a degree prompted this little exploration. Meh. Not happy right now.

The man is certifiably batshit insane.

> President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a “Top Secret” No 10 memo reveals. > > But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash. > > A source said: “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.” > > […] > > Al-Jazeera’s HQ is in the business district of Qatar’s capital, Doha. > > Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US’s desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of “collateral damage”. > > Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists. > > To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself. > > The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

It’s not that this kind of thing doesn’t happen often, it’s just the first time that I’ve seen it before it got fixed. Currently, a Wikipedia search for Scott McClellan returns this…

Here’s the current page, and here’s the revision that I took a screenshot of.

Hmmmm…suck-o: Target’s CEO is a massive republican.

> Now we know why the target is red. > > And, we seem to be getting a clearer picture as to why Target has sided with the far-right Christian wackos, in permitting their pharmacists to turn you away because they think you’re a sinner. > > Over the years, Target CEO Robert Ulrich has donated: > > * $71,353 to Republicans > * $3,660 to Democrats > > Hmmm… that’s interesting. > > Perhaps my favorite donation is the $5,000 he gave just two months ago to a PAC named “Every Republican is Crucial.”

And here’s some info from the first link in the quoted text above, because I hadn’t heard about this before:

> Planned Parenthood has had other communications with Target. Target’s policy is that the customer can go to hell if their pharmacist thinks you’re a sinner. Target will let their pharmacist turn you away so that YOU have to go find another pharmacy, rather than their pharmacist getting another frigging job. > > You have to love Target. They’re willing to hire people who don’t wan to do the very job they’re applying for. And their own employee’s bigotry and bias matters more to them than the emergency health needs of their own customers.

Dammit — is it even possible to shop guilt-free anymore? As far as I can tell, the only way to make sure as little of my money as possible goes to causes and organizations that I don’t support is to keep it in a jar in my mattress and never spend any of it.

Need another reason to stay far, far away from Wal-Mart? Or maybe another reason to be disgusted with the culture of fear and repression of political dissent in the country? Be glad you’re not this high school student.

> Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students. But that’s what happened on September 20. > > Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s-down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.” > > According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect. > > An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

Is this really the country we want it to be? Sadly, it’s the country the voters asked for.

(via seagoth)

Indiana’s “Handmaid’s Tale” bill has been pulled.

> A controversial proposed bill to prohibit gays, lesbians and single people from using medical procedures to become pregnant has been dropped by its legislative sponsor. > > State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”

(via Terrance)

If this passes, I may want to stop admitting that, though I grew up in Alaska, I was born in Indiana…and most of my extended family on my dad’s side is still there.

Indiana Republicans are working on a bill that will make it so that only legally married women will be allowed to reproduce.

> Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for  motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

As Terrance points out:

> You better believe gays and lesbians seeking to have children via artificial insemination, surrogacy, etc., will stopped in their tracks by this law. > > What I don’t understand is why the law only addresses motherhood. Why isn’t it a class B felony under this law for a man to engage in “unauthorized reproduction”? You don’t have to read The Handmaid’s Tale to envision what these folks have in store.

Just horrendous. This needs to get stopped, as soon as possible.

(via Terrance and Boing Boing)

Update: The bill has been yanked.

> A controversial proposed bill to prohibit gays, lesbians and single people from using medical procedures to become pregnant has been dropped by its legislative sponsor. > > State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”

Heh — “more complex than anticipated.” In other words, she realized that word had gotten out just how insane this was.

True then, and true now:

> If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of ratial equality (sic) then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the … confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.

— Edward R. Murrow, Ford Fiftieth Anniversary Show, CBS and NBC, June 1953, “Conclusion.”

Found on Wikipedia while looking up information on Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joe McCarthy after watching the trailer for Good Night and Good Luck — which, by the way, looks very interesting.

Snipped from Terrance:

> Wanda Sykes, on Jay Leno, says of president Bush. > > Jay: “But President Bush took responsibility.” > > Wanda: “I don’t think the President should have taken responsibility…. I don’t blame the President. I blame the American people. Y’all knew the man was slow when you voted him in. You can’t blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you’re the one who gave him the keys.”

So very, very true.

Snopes just confirmed that this is an authentic photo of a note written by President Bush “to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005.” Apparently the photo’s been causing something of a stir because of the content of the note:

> I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible…

While it’s an admittedly easy opportunity to snicker at our dearly beloved führer president, I think people have been interpreting this incorrectly.

President Bush wasn’t checking to make sure he could wander out to the restroom without offending anyone.

The real story is that he wasn’t sure. He didn’t say that he needed a break — he said that he thought he might need a bathroom break. He then followed that up by musing as to whether it was even possible that he’d need a bathroom break.

Weird, weird man.

“ToriMix v1” by Amos, Tori from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2000, 45:31).

Found this via Chris Randall. Yes, I know it’s over-simplified hyperbole, and I’m guessing that it dates from roundabout election time. So what. It gave me a grin.

(Sidenote: I did a Google Search to see how widespread this was, and only got four hits, three of which were variations of the URL to Chris’s blog. But if I do a Google Blog Search, I get 165 hits. Has Google removed weblogs [or, at the very least, drasticaly de-emphasized them] from their default search now that their blog search is active?)

> Dear Red States… > > We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking just the Blue States with us. > > In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country. > > To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. > > We get the Statue of Liberty. We get Hollywood and Yosemite. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom and Enron. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss. We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. > > Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms. > > Please be aware that the new country will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your politicians and evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire. > > With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. > > With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. > > Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with high morals.

So…when did CNN start hiring The Onion’s writers?

Oh, wait. They’re serious?

Amazing.

At least he’s actually acting like a President for once. Pity that it took this long, this big of a catastrophe, this many dead people, and I’d bet that it’s motivated more by his tanking approval rate than any real sense of responsibility…but at least it’s something.

“Nothing Really Matters (Kruder and Dorfmeister)” by Madonna from the album Nothing Really Matters (1999, 11:10).

Ganked this one straight from Daily Kos, via Boing Boing:

> WARNING: Severe Cognitive Dissonance Ahead! > > > Hollywood wins Internet piracy battle
> > The U.S. Supreme Court rules against file-sharing service Grokster in a closely watched piracy case. > > > > NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled [last month] that software companies can be held liable for copyright infringement when individuals use their technology to download songs and movies illegally. > > > > [Hollywood’s] victory [last month]…dealt a big blow to technology companies, which claim that holding them accountable for the illegal downloading of songs, movies, video games and other proprietary products would stifle their ability to develop new products. > > > > “We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties,” Justice Souter wrote. > > Wait for it… wait for it… > > > Senate Moves to Shield Gun Industry > > > > WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Tuesday moved the National Rifle Association’s top priority ahead of a $491 billion defense bill, setting up a vote on legislation to shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits over gun crimes. > > > > “The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. “We look at it from a standpoint of stopping lawsuit abuse.” > > > > The bill would prohibit lawsuits against the firearms industry for damages resulting form the unlawful use of a firearm or ammunition. > > > > [Senator Larry] Craig said such lawsuits are “predatory and aimed at bankrupting the firearms industry,” unfairly blaming dealers and manufacturers for the crimes of gun users. > > Got that? If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally copy a movie, that company is liable. If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally kill a human, that company is not liable. What’s the common logic holding these disparate concepts together? Massive corporate special interest money. Welcome to your government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, where a pirated copy of “Hollywood Homicide” is bigger threat than an actual Hollywood homicide.

This is such a crock. How soon until I can afford to bail from this bass-ackwards country?

“

“No One is Fax Exempt” by Rollins, Henry from the album Think Tank (1998, 19:28).