The AP doesn’t want to commit, I guess:

Poll: Americans see gloom, doom in 2007

AP Poll: Americans Optimistic for 2007

Hitchens on Gerald Ford:

To have been soft on Republican crime, soft on Baathism, soft on the shah, soft on Indonesian fascism, and soft on Communism, all in one brief and transient presidency, argues for the sort of sportsmanlike Midwestern geniality that we do not ever need to see again.

Ouch.

(updated)

Saddam, after he got plucked from his “spiderhole,” got ample opportunity to lecture the people of Iraq, the judge, the worldwide television audience, and his victims—those who survived him, that is.

His quick ending is not A-okay with Human Rights Watch, and I get that. But you gotta admit it’s somewhat better than the justice meted out by our very own all-American hero Judge Roy Bean. And to suggest, as the Nation does, that it was a “show trial” is a hideous stain on the memory of the tens upon tens of thousands who were brutalized by the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe starting in the late 1940s and ending only when the populations of those wretched nations were “pacified.” (update: Not to mention the innumerable “enemies” Stalin murdered inside the Soviet Union.)
What Saddam deserved was the fate of the Romanian tyrant and megalomaniac:

Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Ceausescu after their execution at a military base in Tirgoviste on Dec. 25, 1989

What he got was a lot better than what he gave.

So it goes.

{{reader advisory: please read “ScrappleFace Editor Responds to Real Editor” in its entirety—which I hereby nominate as the Best Blog Post of 2006—and memorize its contents before proceeding to read the post that follows}}

There are so many candidates that it’s hard to keep track. This checklist should come in handy after we nuke the Islamic Republic of Iran.
1) the neocons—a representative argument goes like this:

The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of US (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East.

[Seymour] Hirsch believes that the US military’s opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has been overcome by the civilian neocon authorities in the Bush administration. Desperate to retrieve their drive toward hegemony from defeat in Iraq, the neocons are betting on the immense attraction to the American public of force plus success. It is possible that Bush will be blocked by Europe, Russia and China, but there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons in behest of US hegemony.

It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the US government and have no organized opposition in American politics.)

2) Azar Nafisi—according to the Columbia University “scholar” Hamid Dabashi:

Fanon was right. Any attack on Iran by the United States must be blamed squarely on Azar Nafisi, author of that infamous pedophile’s handbook, Bonking Lolita In Tehran.

The author of BLT is a shameless mouthpiece for Washington’s imperial designs on the Middle East.

3) Israel and the Israel Lobby—according to Scott Ritter in a new book:

“The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel Lobby, has succeeded,” Ritter writes, “in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.”

Later in the book, Ritter adds: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

4) Zionists (commenters all over the leftosphere—too many to link)

5) Joe Klein—according to a Daily Kos diary

Joe Klein had recently stated on ABC’s This Week that using nukes against Iran must be kept “on the table”.

Now progressive blogger Mike Stark has made him take those words back on the Jim Bohannon radio show.

6) Bush and Cheney—according to Seymour Hersh:

The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change.

7) ***

Of course this isn’t really about nuking Iran. It’s about Who’s In and Who’s Out?—it’s about jockeying for power and privilege in 2007 and, looking waaaay too far ahead, in January 2009. It’s about domestic power politics—inside the Beltway, inside boardrooms, inside the media elite, inside academia, inside literary salons, inside the punditocracy, inside the leftosphere, and inside polite society.

Still, it’s got the nasty Scent of Salem about it, dontcha think?

———-

*** I’ve run out of steam. I’m sure there are more. All suggestions (with links) welcome.

It’s a toss-up between Sacha Baron Cohen, out of character, accepting an award for his movie Borat:

“Borat couldn’t be here. He was the guest of honor at the Tehran Holocaust denial conference.”

And Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran:

I can name a few amazing, as well as a number of disappointing, cultural events for 2006, but none can match my sense of outrage at the so-called Holocaust conference convened by the Iranian government. I felt outraged as a human being, because, like all the great human catastrophes, the Holocaust transcends its own time and place, concerning not just the Jews and those who tried to eliminate them but the rest of mankind, and when we deny it or remain silent about it, when we manipulate it for political purposes, we become complicit in the assault not only against the actual victims but against all that goes by the name humane.

As an Iranian, it was with a sense of tragic irony that I witnessed a regime that has denied Iranian citizens the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, and has systematically repressed, jailed, and tortured thousands of its own citizens for demanding their most basic rights, claim to provide freedom of expression for neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

I had to remind myself that, while the ruling elite in Iran convenes such an event in the name of the country’s culture and religion, many Iranians boast of the fact that more than 2,500 years ago, a Persian king, Cyrus, after the conquest of Babylon, allowed the Jewish people to return to their land and permitted the practice of all cults and beliefs of the countries he had conquered. The ancient city of Hamadan is the site of the pre-Islamic temple of the water goddess Anahita, the Mausoleum of the vagabond poet Baba Taher, and the shrine of  Esther—believed to have been the wife of the Persian king, Xerxes—and her cousin Mordecai, who together rescued the Jewish people from extermination.

These sites represent the best of the Iranian culture and tradition, its diversity, its passion for poetry, its hospitality and generosity toward others. And yet, today when we talk about Iranian culture, none of this comes to mind.

Scandals are great for creating buzz!

Too bad Judith Regan spoiled a great potential bestseller by trying to do a two-hour TV special!

While Oprah was flaying James Frey on TV, people were flocking to the stores to buy his book!

Publishers don’t fact-check the books they publish—it’s too expensive!

There’s plagiarism and there’s literary license!

These are just some of the reality-based opinions floated in Josh Getlin’s roundup of the year in books, 2006.

Getlin also quotes a party-pooping representative of the literary establishment:

“A lot of this is pretty tawdry stuff,” said James Atlas, biographer of Saul Bellow and a longtime editor. “It was, in so many ways, a year of miscreancy in the American book business.”

Onward to more miscreancy in 2007—and better sales!

Here’s a reason to hate the BBC that has nothing to do with its relentless anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism. Citing a study, the Beeb wants to keep the little woman busy in the kitchen.

Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.

The research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries found doing household chores was far more cancer protective than playing sport.

Dusting, mopping and vacuuming was also better than having a physical job.

The women in the Cancer Research UK-funded study spent an average of 16 to 17 hours a week cooking, cleaning and doing the washing.

What the study actually says—and it certainly isn’t promoting housework—is buried at the bottom of the article (emphasis added):

The international authors said their results suggested that moderate forms of physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk.

Dream on, male Beebsters. The missus ain’t gonna be darning your socks anytime soon.

But perhaps you live in Lebanon and have a yen for different scent, one that reminds you of Hezbollah. How about buying “Resistance Perfume”? It’s unisex, it sells for only $1, and it

comes “exclusively” with a political message and a picture of Hizbullah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Apparently, the scent of resistance is a strong and musky one that comes with a single pledge - “a truthful” one.

“You are the truthful promise … and I have great faith in you and I promise you divine victory,” is the perfume’s slogan, borrowed from one of Nasrallah’s speeches during the July-August war with Israel.

A digitally manipulated picture of a sinking ship, meant to represent the Israeli warship damaged by a Hizbullah missile during the conflict, along with reprints of Nasrallah’s speeches and messages from the “Lebanese prisoners in Israeli prisons” - are all part of the perfume’s package, turning a cover into a political message.

It’s the “green” choice too, by the way:

“We can put popular European brands” in the “Resistance” bottles, he said. “Versace, Chanel, Escada, white musk, floral scents, whatever scent you want, you can get.”

You can read all about it here: “New Perfume Smells Like ‘Divine Victory” ***

—-

*** The headline refers to Hezbollah’s propaganda campaign, begun immediately following Israel’s smashing of Hezbollah strongholds to smithereens. The ad campaign proclaimed, in French, Hezbollah’s “divine victory” over Israel. I wrote about it here, and I’ll be writing more about propaganda and PRopaganda(TM). They go hand in hand with infotainment.

Usually I’m annoyed by the posters at Matthew Yglesias’s blog for their simpleminded parroting and cheerleading of whatever politically correct “liberal” or “progressive” position young Yglesias stakes out for them.

Yglesias has a tic. When he’s against something, he tends to prounounce it a “bad idea.” (Don’t believe me? do a Google search of “Yglesias” and “bad idea.”). Usually, the things he considers “bad ideas” are “bad” because they can’t be reconciled with a (politically correct) “liberal” worldview. Color me deeply unimpressed by this kind of circular ideological “reasoning” from an otherwise bright-seeming and knowledgeable Harvard graduate who is quoted admiringly all over the blogosphere.

So there’s that. But today I’m annoyed at the gang over there for dissing the Nintendo Wii because it requires—gasp!—physical exertion.

Yglesias writes:

there’s something odd about a video game system that’s actually physically strenuous. I got into some monster rallies playing Wii Tennis and I think I hurt my elbow.

One of his commenters responds:

the whole idea of a video game that involves full-body physical motion is just…unsettlingly “cyber” to me, like that factory in China where people have full-time jobs farming characters for online RPGs, or the very existence of Google Earth.

I want all this disturbing William Gibson stuff to go away. Bring on the global warming and the peak oil! Luddites, arise!

Fer chrissakes! Nintendo created a device for getting that gets young Americans off their asses to do some physical activity. What the hell is wrong with that in a nation of obese children?

 John K. Harman at Editor and Publisher thinks he’s got the answer for newspapers suffering the same decline of readership: put Oprah on the cover of everything. Every day.

Set aside your top left column of your front page and devote it all to America’s Everywoman.

Report on the content of her latest television program.

Report on the latest issue of her latest magazine.

Report on the new contents on her web site.

Report on her latest book selection.

Report on her physical fitness and nutrition initiatives.

Report on her latest cause.

Report on her travels.

Don’t forget to report on Oprah’s personal life and the latest gossip about her.

Why?

Why should editors throw out the rule book about what belongs on the front page and devote precious space to someone best known as a celebrity entertainer? The reason is because Oprah has a better handle on the pulse of the people than you do. …

because she is strong with four groups that [editors] have trouble reaching: women, minorities, young adults and youth.

By Jove, I think he’s got it: Oprah is the Queen of Infotainment.

Which, by the way, I mentioned in my very first blog post, “As the Page Turns.”

and Fidel Castro doesn’t have cancer—in fact he’s on the road to recovery:

A leading Spanish surgeon who flew to Havana last week to examine Cuban leader Fidel Castro says he does not have cancer or need further surgery. …

Dr Garcia is an expert on intestinal ailments, particularly cancer.

Of Mr Castro, he said: “His physical activity is excellent, his intellectual activity intact, I’d say fantastic, he’s recovering from his previous operation.

“He asks every day to return to work, but doctors advise him not to, to take it easy.”

It has been 31 years since SNL’s Chevy Chase had occasion to ridicule NBC for it’s on-again off-again Franco death watch. I’ve seen no Fidel-is-still-alive satires. How come? Is Castro that much of a sacred cow?

I know I’m late to this party, but I loved Casino Royale. Daniel Craig and the filmmakers grok Ian Fleming’s protagonist, who is “ironical, brutal and cold,” as the NYT’s Manohla Dargis reminds us:

Every generation gets the Bond it deserves if not necessarily desires, and with his creased face and uneasy smile, Mr. Craig fits these grim times well. … “Casino Royale” opens with a black-and-white sequence that finds the spy making his first government-sanctioned kills. The inky blood soon gives way to full-blown color, but not until Bond has killed one man with his hands after a violent struggle and fatally shot a second.

“Made you feel it, did he?” someone asks Bond of his first victim. Bond doesn’t answer. From the way the director, Martin Campbell, stages the action though, it’s clear that he wants to make sure we do feel it.

After twenty-five years of the debonair, ironical side of Bond, the cold and brutal side is back.

Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill.

Dargis remarks on this, but she is dismissive of the movie’s “shenanigans”—it’s 007, a mere entertainment for the masses, after all. She takes for granted—or perhaps doesn’t want to take into account—something that Daniel Craig’s Bond does not, and it’s what accounts for his nuanced portrait: that he is licensed to kill really bad guys (not cartoon villains) for a morally superior cause (queen and country). Craig’s Bond couldn’t care less if his martinis are shaken or stirred, but he’s not confused about which side he’s on. And neither is the audience.

How utterly refreshing.

Curiously, while Dargis acknowledges a “core seriousness” to the film, she ascribes this merely to the filmmakers’ desire to make pots of money by setting up a financially successful franchise. She nods to the care that went into the project—the usual extravagant pyrotechnics just won’t do the trick, she implies, because audiences are too sophisticated after having seen one too many Bond movies—but she fails to take it that crucial step further and acknowledge the real source of audience gratification.

Daniel Craig’s Bond is the brute whose presence we would rather not think about but whose existence somewhere on the periphery of our consciousness comforts us. He embodies the dictum attributed (falsely but plausibly) to George Orwell:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Ms. Dargis seems to find this notion—and its personification in a James Bond for the 21st century—distasteful. Me? I’m grateful to those rough men.

She may not be your cuppa,

focusing as she does on family, faith, respect for the elderly, and the gentle suggestion that as human beings we should all look for the things we have in common rather than the things that tear us apart:

“The pressures of modern life sometimes seem to be weakening the links which have traditionally kept us together as families and communities. As children grow up and develop their own sense of confidence and independence in the ever-changing technological environment, there is always the danger of a real divide opening up between young and old, based on unfamiliarity, ignorance or misunderstanding. It is worth bearing in mind that all of our faith communities encourage the bridging of that divide.”

That’s why Britain’s Channel 4 offers an alternative each year to the queen’s annual Christmas message, which is broadcast on BBC and ITV. Yesterday, it was presented by this woman,

a British convert to Islam, who pleaded for understanding for herself and those like her.

I want to be part of this society - this is where I choose to live. I hope that the society is more accepting of my personal choice. It’s not about separation. … [A]s a society we need to be more tolerant of people’s personal choices.

Funny, but I thought it’s exactly because we in the West are tolerant of people’s personal choices that “news organizations” like Britain’s Channel 4 showcase the in-your-face antics of “spokespersons” like Ms. Feels So Liberated While Hiding Behind a Mask, pictured above.

Actually, we love your “personal choices.” We—via the media, the globalized news-entertainment complex, and the blogosphere—feed off them. They’re political porn: cheap entertainment. The weirder you are, the higher the infotainment quotient. Just ask Fox News.

Judith Regan has a witness who will testify that she didn’t say a “Jewish cabal” at HarperCollins was out to get her:

Attorney Bert Fields said that the employee, Carmen del Toro, is prepared to testify that Regan “is telling the absolute truth, that she did not make the anti-Semitic remark attributed to her.”

Hmm. This news is released on Christmas Day.

Let’s get down to business
I don’t got no time to play around what is this?
Must be a circus in town, let’s shut the shit down
On these clowns, can I get a witness?

—Eminem, “Business”

Here’s the divine Emmylou Harris singing “Love and Happiness“*** from

All the Roadrunning, by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, an inspired—and inspiring—collaboration.

——-
*** The You Tube clip is a bootleg—amateurish video layered over Emmylou singing this song live in November 2006. I think it’s the only live performance of this song available online. You Tube doesn’t permit embedding. View at your own risk. Yadda yadda yadda.

The clip sucks. Listen to the MP3 instead (click on the link above and scroll halfway down the page of the blog post that shows up, and thanks to the blog owner for the MP3).

Better yet: buy the disk. You will want to own it. I promise.

James Brown, R.I.P:

Blogging will be erratic—as the mood strikes. I’m sure I’ll be itching to get back to my keyboard soon enough.

Enjoy your festivities and your families and friends. And spare a thought (or, preferably, something more substantial) for those less fortunate than we.

Rachel Sklar, the brains behind Eat the Press, sent me a lovely bouquet, and I threw her a kiss.

You can read our exchange in the comments to this post.
I’ve got more to say, but it’s December 22nd and I’m waaaay behind with everything I’ve got to do.

Later.

I don’t know nothin’ ’bout economics, but I know a hypocrite when I read his column. That would be Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who for six years has been decrying Bush as dangerous and his handling of the economy as disastrous. Krugman has been saying the economy is in a shambles, that the roof is going to cave in on us at any moment, and that the deficits will cripple our children and our children’s children and our children’s children’s children.

Today, however, he thinks the victorious Democrats should ignore the deficit ($$) and spend, spend, spend (when they’re not cutting funding for the war in Iraq). After all, it worked so well for the Republicans:

Mr. Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries [under Clinton] in American history. But it’s now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn’t spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending.

Good advice: the Democrats should spend on “good things” [unlike the evil Republicans, who spend on "bad things" like war? --ed.].

Why do so many columnists and pundits talk like third graders?

On the Judith Regan story. I’m too lazy to link (and bored with this story), but being a responsible blogger, I have to revise my original statement that ReganBooks was “highly profitable.”

I am now skeptical of that assumption. Some reports have ReganBooks as a 40-person operation. If that’s true (and I don’t see how it could be—it seems absurd), there’s no way it’s profitable. Indeed, ReganBooks may not have been profitable enough, period, to make worthwhile the continuing negative news stories about the Judith. Thus the firing at the first possible opportunity after the scandal that damaged King Rupert.

I am also puzzled about whether Regan was let go from both NewsCorp and HarperCollins, or indeed if she had a separate arrangement with NewsCorp. No one is saying.

Is no one digging for this information? Why not?

I’ve been enjoying my long-postponed Billy Wilder festival. Last week, we watched Sunset Boulevard and Witness for the Prosecution, both of which I’d seen many times before and enjoyed just as much as if I were coming to them for the first time.

Tonight, we watched One, Two, Three, which I’d never seen before. It’s wicked!—and refreshingly straight-on anti-establishment. Whatever you’re selling, Wilder isn’t having any of it. (You’ve gotta know by now that I love that.)

I’m wild about Billy, and I’m in mourning for his kind of smart filmmaking, which tapped into rich cultural veins (yes they were middlebrow; so what?). I particularly love Wilder when he goes directly at his target. Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant gives you a flavor:

Wilder normally didn’t come out with opinions on politics. He’d participated in the de-Nazification of Germany for the Army, and made a good comedy called A Foreign Affair out of the situation, but he mostly stayed away from topical themes, especially after the backlash of his rather subversive film noir Ace in the Hole.

But in One, Two, Three he comes out swinging at every pitch available. It’s everything American versus everything Eastern-bloc: baseball, soft drinks, Huntley & Brinkley, Gone With the Wind and the Pledge of Allegiance - versus Commisars, party dues, propaganda, missiles, caviar, trains that don’t run on time and pitiless interrogators using The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini as a torture device. Americans are arrogant, pushy, boorish, ignorant, sex-obsessed and success-driven, while the East Germans and Russians are sneaky, arrogant, paranoid Marx-spouters who hate The Wall Street Journal and want Yankee to Go Home. In between, Wilder gets in a few merciless jabs at the efficient West Germans - every West Berliner seems to have a guilty secret in their closet. A reporter is revealed to be ex-S.S. officer. MacNamara’s own assistant clicks his heels at every command and lets slip that he used to be a pastry cook in the S.S., ” A very bad pastry cook.” MacNamara: “Schlemmer! You’re back in the S.S. again! Smaller Salary!”

Netflix it—Jimmy Cagney is magnificent!

(I wrote this on the run earlier today; embarrassing typos are now fixed)

A delightful and helpful reminder for those contemplating “negotiations” with the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Azar Nafisi, the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” quoted a former colleague in Tehran who compared dealing with the Islamic Republic to playing chess with a monkey.

“In the middle of the game, the monkey picks up your queen and swallows it,” she said. “Then what are you going to do? You are dealing with a country that is not going to follow your rules.”

Nafisi, like all the Iranian expats/analysts interviewed for the New York Times piece I quoted above, is in favor of engaging Iran, not bombing it.***

Mehdi Khaliji, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, for example, makes a lot of sense:

With Iran, the United States needs to become both more confrontational in private, and less bellicose publicly, he said. For example, rather than threatening regime change and not doing much to back it up, he said, the American military should have come down hard on Iranian interference in Iraq while sounding more diplomatic in public. That approach would make Iran more amenable to compromise, he said [emphasis added].

Like I was saying yesterday, when I was talking about plan B: it’s all about hypocrisy public diplomacy. Get used to it.

———–

***In a demented attack earlier this year on Nafisi and her wildly successful memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran (a work of dissident literature about the soul-killing totalitarian regime of the Mad Mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Columbia “scholar” Hamid Dabashi accused Nafisi of being a “native informer” and “colonial agent” serving the agenda of the Bush administration and of writing “a kaffeeklatsch version of English literature as the ideological foregrounding of American empire.” He called her work “reminiscent of the most pestiferous colonial projects of the British in India.”

In an interview, he called Nafisi “the Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib dressed up as the simple, everyday comprador intellectual you might meet in the supermarket.”

I have no desire to get in between Persians. However, this is my wish for “Professor” Dabashi:

May all his teeth fall out except one, and may that one be the source of constant, agonizing pain.

(updated with a p.p.s.)

Over at Slate, Shmuel Rosner raises the complicated issues involved in the West’s strong support for the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas (support that now comes also from Israel’s Olmert, as I mentioned earlier today) and the concomitant attempt to squash the radical theocratic Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas (which, inconveniently, was democratically elected in January—oops!).

As the dangerous situation in the Palestinian territories unravels, one question stands out: Who are the good guys? The politicians who are now trying to topple a democratically elected government or the people in power who are trying to pursue their ideology—one that they didn’t hide from the voters who freely chose to elect them? And how come all these world leaders are publicly siding with the revolutionaries?

One word. Ready for it? Realism—as in cynicism and in international relations “realism.”

Whatever you think of the Baker-Hamilton report and its shortcomings, it is realism that is making headway this week in the Palestinian territories. Realism—and a healthy dose of cynicism.

So, the Palestinians who oppose Abbas’ moves will be right when they point to this chain of events as the culmination of Western hypocrisy. But those who support him—in Palestine and around the world—will also be right. Sometimes, hypocrisy is the most basic way to recognize reality.

Hypocrisy: get used to it (although, truth be told, if you’re not used to it by now, you’re living on another plane, not in the plugged-in Globally PC world of the early 21st century).

p.s. I would love to believe that this—plan B, wherein we (Western-style progressive/moderates) lay aside talk of democracy and unite against a common foe (Islamofascist reactionaries)—will work. (I have grave doubts; but there’s always hope.)

As pertains to foreign policy: I think we (liberal hawkish neocon fellow-travelers) should not be wedded to ideology; that we should face the fact that conditions on the ground in Iraq were resistant to the fondest and sincerest hopes of the war planners; that democracy is still a goal but further off from realization in Iraq—and the Middle East, where representative government is stymied by tribalism—than we had hoped; that the chaos in the Middle East can only be (if that) managed (we hope), not solved; that regardless of how we handle Iraq, managing the Middle East would be well served by a concerted effort to make big public gestures to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people (in a way that does not threaten Israeli security any more than it is already threatened); that an improvement in the lot of the Palestinian people is long, long overdue and a good in and of itself; and finally: that a visible improvement in the lot of the Palestinian people would be the biggest PR coup in living memory—and that it would force a change on the region.

But I may be daydreaming. Because that is precisely what our enemies are doing their level best to prevent.

p.p.s. For Rosner, Fatah are the “good guys” and Hamas are the “bad guys.”

For Jimmy Carter, the good guys are the Palestinians and the bad guys are the Israelis: that’s so 20th century.

Angelina Jolie is the fakest of Hollywood narcissist fakers: a heat-seeking missile of celebrity, a fabrication of a human being. She’s smart and ambitious. She wanted more than anything to be a movie star, and became one (she’s a great actress), just like that. That was too easy and she got bored, so she decided she wanted to do something bigger—(like finish high school, go to college, go into one of the helping professions, perhaps? —ed.). She decided she would solve humanity’s problems by traipsing around looking lovely in all the godforsaken corners of the world. And people lap it up. Well…except for the Superficial:

Angelina Jolie went on Good Morning America yesterday and said she and Brad Pitt want more children and would likely adopt to balance their “mixed-race family.” She says:

“I want Mad (Maddox) to know that as our family grew and we all came together, we didn’t just start having children, biological children. Yes, we have Shiloh and it’s been a wonderful experience, but we want to find another brother or sister in the world for our family. I’m on the pill. You know, now the questions are more when you have a mixed-race family, do you balance the races so there’s another African person in the house for Z? So there’s another Asian person in the house for Mad? Shiloh has Brad and I she can look at. What’s best for the children as they grow? … We don’t just want to have different children from different countries. That’s not the point.”

Five years from now Angelina is gonna run out of races to adopt and start turning to leprechauns and Oompa-Loompas. They’re like Pokemon to her. Gotta catch ‘em all!

Just a couple of weeks ago I was saying how much I liked Eat the Press. I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t jinx it or something (although I have noticed one improvement: the pieces are now signed more often than not).

There was a bold, brassy, and bizarre theory floated by Rachel Sklar this morning (which has since been retracted and corrected, sort of), which I found disconcerting (If She Did It, Isn’t It Relevant If She’s Jewish?):

[Judith Regan] was fired for throwing a hissy fit on the phone with a HarperCollins laywer during which she made “comments that were deemed anti-Semitic,” according to the NYT. The NYT declines to specifically relay those comments, but here’s another important detail they don’t mention: Whether Judith Regan is Jewish. ETP couldn’t find written confirmation of that, but based on a number of factors including but not limited to the fact that “Judith” means “Jewess” in Hebrew, let’s assume for argument’s sake that she is.

Does it matter? It sure does. Why? Because anti-Semitic comments from Jew to Jew are different from anti-Semitic comments coming from, say, Mel Gibson.

Huh? Sklar was ripping the Times for not stating all the facts (i.e., not clarifying Regan’s religion in a story about her insulting others based on their religion). Fair enough. The story could have said: “Regan, who is not Jewish, made comments that were deemed anti-Semitic.” However, if I were the editor of a piece with that text, I would have deleted the reference.

It sounds weird, not to mention detached from reality, to imply that Jews go around making anti-Semitic comments to one another and then draw attention to it by creating a public scandal. (”Waaaahhhhh! She called me a dirty Jew! I’m gonna make her pay!”)

It just doesn’t wash, even as a logical proposition. Am I wrong?

But then the problem was compounded by a) Sklar’s bizarre claim that she couldn’t find written evidence of Regan’s religion (even though one assumes that, as a writer about media, she’s familiar with research: googling…at a minimum), followed b) by a leap of “logic” whereby she assumes that Regan could be Jewish because her first name means “Jewess” in Hebrew.

Hmmm. I’ve got my snark hat on, and even so I fail to understand this bizarrely aggressive item from Sklar.

Then there was Sklar’s half-correction later in the day:

Okay, so, mysteries of Judith Regan’s ancestry solved:

She would come home to this Irish-Sicilian Catholic family and just shout out ‘penis’…

Oops. We totally shouldn’t have stopped reading that Vanity Fair article at “golden vagina.” (But can you blame us?) In any case, a few helpful tipsters have cleared us up on the issue of Regan’s ancestry — which, by the way, we never said was Jewish, we just said could have been Jewish, and [that
it] ought [to] have been clarified either way.

Sklar is not weaseling out of this one. No, she didn’t say Regan is Jewish, but everything in the story—from the title to the ridiculous assumption based on the meaning of Regan’s name in Hebrew—strongly implied that Sklar thought she was.

Unfortunately, in the second piece, she keeps digging that hole for herself, by (snarkily) spreading a rumor (which she picked up from what she hints is a disreputable and genuinely anti-Semitic website) that Rupert Murdoch is Jewish.

Is it me, or is this not infotaining?

Haaretz reports:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday reiterated a call for a long-term truce with Israel and for the formation of a temporary Palestinian state along the 1967 borders.

So far so good (as far as it goes, that is: Israel’s 1967 borders are of course indefensible against the Katyusha and Qassam rockets that Hamas has in its arsenal, not to mention the addition arms it is hoping to secure from Iran).

Of course only two weeks ago in Tehran, Haniyeh was saying something entirely different:

Haniyeh told students at the Tehran University during a visit to Iran two weeks ago that Hamas would never recognize Israel.

“The arrogant of the world and the Zionists… want us to recognize the usurpation of the Palestinian lands and stop jihad and resistance and accept the agreements reached with the Zionist enemies in the past,” he said.

“I’m insisting from this podium that these issues won’t materialize. We will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem,” he said. 

Meanwhile, mob warfare between Fatah thugs and Hamas gangsters continues unabated.

The cease-fire between Palestinian factions in Gaza collapsed yesterday evening, less than 24 hours after it was forged. The armed wing of Hamas abducted Sufyan Abu Zaida, a former Fatah cabinet minister and held him for a few hours last night before releasing him. In response, Fatah kidnapped 11 Hamas militants in the Jabalya area, including three senior members of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, and threatened to kill them unless Abu Zaida was released.

A Hamas military spokesman said last night that Abu Zaida’s release was a goodwill gesture on Hamas’ part. Fatah was expected to release the 11 Hamas militants at about midnight as part of a deal between Hamas and Fatah. Fatah militants also abducted Hamas Parliament Member Yousef al-Sharafi last night.

And Tony Blair is in the region to support Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and Israel’s Olmert:

 The embattled Palestinian Arab leader, Mahmoud Abbas, won crucial support from both Prime Ministers Blair of Britain and Olmert of Israel yesterday as he struggled to head off civil war in the Palestinian Arab territories and push forward peace negotiations.After meeting Mr. Abbas in his presidential compound in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank, Mr. Blair threw his support behind Mr. Abbas’s plan to hold early elections in the Palestinian Arab territories.

Later, Mr. Olmert said he was preparing to set up a committee with the Palestinian Arabs to discuss the crucial issue of prisoner releases. Both sides have been working through Egyptian mediators on a possible prisoner swap for months, weighing the idea of freeing several hundred Palestinian Arab prisoners in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier being held in Gaza since June.

It’s so obvious that they are all trying to marginalize Hamas—oops! I should have said the glorious resistance—which refuses to play along with the “Let’s Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Problem” game.

Which is played like this:

and this:

But I’m not shy, so I’ll share five things you don’t know about me:

1)  I don’t have perfect pitch, but if there’s something very close to it, that’s what I”ve got. (I don’t mean to make it sound like a condition—I love music!)

2) English is not my native language.

3) I was born a lefty and forced rightward…handedness-wise, that is. (And maybe politics-wise, too, but that’s a subject for another day.)

My parents deny it, but I don’t believe them. In Europe, people believe that left-handedness is sinister, literally: sinistra in Latin means “left.” In France, if you’re a lefty you write with your “gauche” hand. Really! What is wrong with these people!? They are completely irrational on the subject.

Anyway, I do all sorts of things with my left hand—I reach for things with my left hand, turn dorknobs with my left hand, pour with my left hand, etc. I also drive my family crazy by twisting those twist-tie thingies with my left hand, and the righties can never figure out now to un-twist them; instead, they twist them even tighter. Ha!).

4) I would like to live on the Gulf of the Poets, in Lerici, Italy, half the year. Every year.

5) I hate blogging pseudonymously. I do it because it alone guarantees my freedom of speech.

Whether you call them Christians or Christianists, some of his co-religionists love love love Israel:

A leading Evangelical US pastor has announced plans to hold a “night to honor Israel ” in every major American city as part of an Evangelical political campaign.

Pastor John Hagee, a Christian leader from Texas, was given an award by the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus during a ceremony jointly held with the World Jewish Congress Monday night, to “honor our Christian allies.”

Addressing the conference by a satellite-linked screen, Hagee delivered an emphatic speech, declaring: “It’s time for us Christians in America , from coast to coast, to speak up for Israel.”

He added that his organization aimed to hold “every congressman and senator accountable for their position on Israel.”

This is likely to create even more distance between traditional American liberals and Israel, of course. Like me, they’re sure to be way less than comfortable about an alliance between Christians who believe in a divine right of the Jews to the land of Israel and Jews who believe in that same divine right.

But I love to imagine Jimmy Carter squiriming over the fact that his co-religionists didn’t get his “message.”

If all this publicity were were serving one of her projects, it would be a mega-hit. Unfortunately, it’s all about foul-mouthed, foul-tempered Judith.

(Printed) rumor has it she was fired for offending a lawyer at HarperCollins during a heated conversation. She routinely curses at people, as in “you fucking fa**ot,” I’m told by people who know—she was Hollywood long before she moved her operation to Los Angeles—so I see no reason not to believe the rumor that an anti-Semitic slur directed at one of her HC colleagues was the final nail in her coffin.)

GalleyCat has the scoop, and lots of links (and GC’s Ron Hogan is even part of the story now). Keep checking back there, ’cause I’m going to be really busy today.

Meanwhile, the NYT’s David Carr is reading my mind, reading my blog, or on the same wave length (which wouldn’t surprise me; he often is). Like me, he concludes that Regan was bad for business:

The “If I Did It” book and television package was shelved not because it was in bad taste or because it was bad for the culture at large, but because it was bad for business.

Carr also gets the true nature of Regan’s sin:

… Rupert Murdoch called the project “ill-conceived.”

The phrase he should have used was “ill-received.”

Yep. The project “looked bad,” and made everyone involved “look bad.” End of story.