From the British tabloid The Sun, here’s some dirt—and I do mean dirt—on “Lady Heather McCartney”:

LADY Heather McCartney posed in depraved pornographic clinches which are bound to sicken her estranged husband Sir Paul and his army of fans.

The ex-model was snapped in a string of lurid scenes for a hard core German book.

Many of the images are too explicit to print in a family newspaper.

One shot shows Heather naked and smothered in baby oil as she performs a sex act on a nude male porn star. The curly-haired man is then photographed performing an act on her with the help of a sex toy.

There’s more if you’re interested. The presumably “non-explicit” photos accompany the article, which is called “Lady Macca’s Porno Past.” Click here to view them.

I do wonder who’s behind this campaign. It’s vicious by any standards…

Unlike, say, the Brits, who revel in deflating the high and mighty,

(from the “Satirical London” exhibit at the Museum of London)

certain people in Lebanon don’t have a sense of humor.

Several thousand Hizbullah supporters took to the streets of Beirut’s southern suburbs late Thursday night, burning tires and blocking roads in protest against a television comedy show that impersonated the group’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The trouble began shortly after the LBCI TV show “Bass Mat Watan” aired a skit in which an actor impersonated Nasrallah, wearing the trademark black turban and sporting a similar beard and spectacles.

Apparently, the TV show is like Saturday Night Live. Here, via Tim Cavanaugh, is an account of the skit in question:

In the scene that provoked the riot, a woman — played by a man in drag — asks Nasrallah whether Hizbullah would lay down its arms after Israel’s withdraws from the disputed border region of Shabaa.

Nasrallah replies that Hizbullah’s weapons will still be needed for “liberating the house of Abu Hassan in Detroit from his Jewish neighbor.”

Nasrallah is being mocked for his obsession with blaming Israel for everying. On Lebanese TV. Sweet.

Alan Riding, in writing up the “Satirical London” exhibit for the New York Times, noted that “religious hypocrisy, extremes of wealth and poverty, out-of-touch politicians, enslavement to fashion, obsession with gadgetry” have been the subjects of satire in England, and the targets were “lawyers, doctors, soldiers, clergymen, intellectuals, even shopkeepers. All apparently merited deflating for the power they wielded.”

As to the significance of satire in our own era:

In an atmosphere of growing religious intolerance and social conformity, sustained by fear, political correctness and electoral apathy, satire can probably aid democracy by stretching the limits of the acceptable. That this may offend is precisely its value. Satire should disturb as well as amuse.

It is not always possible. In dictatorships it can be positively foolish to mock rulers, although satire can sometimes be disguised as parody or allegory. And in many parts of the world there is no tradition of questioning authority through wit or caricature; in such countries two preferred targets, religious and political power, are usually taboo for satirists.

Anthony Ippoliti, a marine serving in Fallujah, writes a letter to his hometown newspaper, The Ridgefield (Connecticut) Press, in which he excoriates war protesters and anti-war activists who say they “support the troops“:

Almost every week, I open The Press and find an article or letter to the editors denouncing the coalition effort in Iraq. Invariably, the individuals behind these anti-war letters and rallies mask their political agendas by asserting that they “support the troops but not the war.” People like Vince Giordano, Paul Sutherland and Anne Stubbs are pictured in the April 13 edition of The Press carrying a yellow-ribboned coffin and signs that say “Bring Them Home Now.” They read off the names of the dead and claim to “show support for our troops” while urging lawmakers to “bring them home.” They believe that the U.S.-led coalition should never have entered Iraq and that the current effort is a never-ending quagmire that has made no progress. They believe that things are progressively getting worse and think that our forces should just pick up and leave. They do all this under the pretense that they are supporting the troops. However, what they are really doing is using our lives and the issue of our safety and well-being as a means to achieve a political end. …

How can these groups claim to support our troops while telling us that what we are participating in is wrong?
How can they support us if they are essentially saying that our blood and sacrifices have all been given in vain?
How can they support us if they say that our comrades and brothers who have been wounded or killed in action have done so for a hopeless and morally questionable cause?…

Please do not feign support while effectively telling us that we are fighting for an unworthy cause. I think I speak for an overwhelming majority of our troops when I ask organizations like The Ridgefield Coalition to Stop the War to discontinue using Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors as a means to serve a political end.
You are neither supporting us nor honoring us. You are doing the exact opposite.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Ippoliti makes another crucial point about the relentlessly downbeat “news” emanating from Iraq:

In Fallujah, the people watch Al Jazeerah. However, they also watch CNN. A lot of them fear that the United States will soon cut and run. The people of Iraq see when our country is divided. When they see rallies to “Bring The Troops Home,” they see that as a sign that we will end our efforts prematurely.
Furthermore, they know that the insurgents will not end their efforts early. That leads them to the conclusion that when we leave, the insurgents will still be there. Therefore, if they help us, their lives and the lives of their loved ones will be in great jeopardy the minute we leave—if we don�t finish the job.
Much that they see on American television leads them to believe that we intend to abandon our efforts before the new Iraqi government is capable of defending itself and its citizens.

The information war is such a crucial part of our effort in this worldwide conflict. Ippoliti talks about just one example of the ramifications of instantaneous global media coverage.

I wonder how often CNN execs think of the influence they have on the hearts and minds of those beyond our shores. At the same time, I think about how much damage Bush has done by (among the myriad other things he’s done wrong) going out of his way to alienate the media.

Where oh where are the grown-ups?

Today’s New York Times takes note of the digital revolution that may or may not be coming to the book industry:

That is one of the hottest debates in the book world right now, as publishers, editors and writers grapple with the Web’s ability to connect readers and writers more quickly and intimately, new technologies that make it easier to search books electronically and the advent of digital devices that promise to do for books what the iPod has done for music: making them easily downloadable and completely portable.

Motoko Rich goes on to note:

Hovering above the discussion of all these technologies is the fear that the publishing industry could be subject to the same upheaval that has plagued the music industry, where digitalization has started to displace the traditional artistic and economic model of the record album with 99-cent song downloads and personalized playlists.

So says the New York Times.
In fact there is no such discussion going on in the book world. The conventional wisdom is that because the e-book was such a bust, digital technology will never threaten books.

How’s that for intelligent reasoning?

This attitude pervades the business—its young denizens as well as its ancient ones, and (almost) everyone in between.

That’s the way it is.